"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money"
About this Quote
Corruption is rarely a suitcase of cash; it is more often a handshake with a future attached. Robert H. Jackson, a statesman who served as Nuremberg prosecutor and a U.S. Supreme Court justice, cuts through the movie version of bribery to name the quieter currency that actually moves systems: loyalty and ambition. Money is blunt and traceable. Allegiance and careerism are elegant, deniable, and often self-administered.
The line is built on a prosecutorial insight: people don not need to be bought when they can be recruited. Loyalty is a ready-made lever because it rewires ethics into identity: you are not compromising, you are being "one of us". Ambition is even cleaner; it converts a public role into a private escalator. The subtext is unnerving because it implicates not just villains but strivers, team players, the dependable insider. A politician bending a rule for a patron, a judge flattering a power center, a bureaucrat sanding off objections to stay promotable: these acts can feel like prudence, not bribery.
Context matters. Jackson lived through the New Deal's massive expansion of federal power, wartime mobilization, and the postwar reckoning with authoritarianism. At Nuremberg, the defense was often some version of loyalty-as-alibi: duty to the nation, obedience to superiors, career survival. Jackson is warning that moral collapse frequently arrives dressed as commitment and opportunity.
The quote works because it indicts the social fabric of institutions, not just individual greed. It suggests the most dangerous bribes are the ones that let you keep believing you are honorable.
The line is built on a prosecutorial insight: people don not need to be bought when they can be recruited. Loyalty is a ready-made lever because it rewires ethics into identity: you are not compromising, you are being "one of us". Ambition is even cleaner; it converts a public role into a private escalator. The subtext is unnerving because it implicates not just villains but strivers, team players, the dependable insider. A politician bending a rule for a patron, a judge flattering a power center, a bureaucrat sanding off objections to stay promotable: these acts can feel like prudence, not bribery.
Context matters. Jackson lived through the New Deal's massive expansion of federal power, wartime mobilization, and the postwar reckoning with authoritarianism. At Nuremberg, the defense was often some version of loyalty-as-alibi: duty to the nation, obedience to superiors, career survival. Jackson is warning that moral collapse frequently arrives dressed as commitment and opportunity.
The quote works because it indicts the social fabric of institutions, not just individual greed. It suggests the most dangerous bribes are the ones that let you keep believing you are honorable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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