Julian Baggini

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.

British Author

Nicholas Kristof

One of the things you learn as a journalist is that when there's no accountability, we humans are capable of tremendous avarice and venality. That's true of union bosses - and of corporate tycoons. Unions, even flawed ones, can provide checks and balances for flawed corporations.

American Journalist

Russell Smith

One of the qualities essential to writing exciting stories, whether for page or screen, is an ability to abandon one's morality. We simply cannot be good writers and good people. One must be able to access one's darkest self, one's venality and pettiness and murderousness.

Canadian Novelist

Rick Wilson

There's a reason most Republicans and a vast majority of voters loathe Donald Trump: his vulgarity, his blistering ignorance, his constant dishonesty, his venality, and his utter lack of the knowledge, judgment, or temperament to be president of the United States.

American Author

David Mamet

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.

American Dramatist

Vikas Swarup

My books may highlight corruption, brutality and venality, but they also show that if these things come to light, there is rectification. The voiceless do have a voice; democratic mechanisms and accountability do exist.

Indian Novelist

James Surowiecki

The problem with venality in business is that getting outraged about it makes it easy to miss the systemic problems that venality often disguises.

Thomas Jefferson

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

American President

Venality implies a judgmental view of someone's actions, suggesting moral corruption.

Negative Connotation

Use 'venality' in formal contexts, like news reports or academic discussions, rather than everyday conversation.

Not Casual

Venality can refer to being motivated by money in ways other than direct bribery, like unethical behavior for financial gain.