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Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten, end of last Sex Pistols concert San Francisco 14 January 1978
Remember what you said about cheating yourself? The Cincinnati Kid 1965 starring Edward G Robinson & Steve McQueen & Ann Margret & Tuesday Weld & Rip Torn & Karl Malden & Joan Blondell & Midge Ware & Jack Weston et al, director Norman Jewison, Melba
You start cheating, Paul, you end up thinking everyone else is cheating too. Robbery 1967 starring Stanley Baker & Joanna Pettet & James Booth & & Frank Finlay & Barry Foster & William Marlowe & Clinton Geryn & George Sewell & Glynn Edwards et al, director Peter Yates, her to him
I think we can get something. Under the rules of the diocese, we’re allowed a raffle prize every couple of years … I’ve been looking up the records and the island hasn’t been given anything to raffle since those two bags of coal in 1964. I think we’re entitled under the rules of the diocese … What if we organised the raffle so that we won it? Then we could bring the car back. It wouldn’t be cheating really … Father Ted s2e2: Think Fast, Father Ted, Ted, Channel 4 1996
Curzon always suspected you were a cheat. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s3e4: Equilibrium, Dax to Sisko
Cheats never prosper. Early 19th century proverb
A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for. W C Fields
Who cheats? Well, just about anyone, if the stakes are right. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
Cheating is a primordial economic act. ibid.
Sports and cheating go hand in hand. That’s because cheating is more common in the face of a bright-line incentive. ibid.
Smaller offices are more honest than big ones. ibid.
Why would a teacher cheat for a kid on a test? ... Lots and lots of teachers were cheating. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics, Sky Atlantic, caption; viz also novel
Everyone’s got their own world compass that determines what they will and won’t do. ibid.
Where is a sport where you would not find cheating? I would have said Sumo Wrestling. ibid.
When stakes are high, and when there’s an incentive to cheat, a small percentage of people always will. ibid.
The realm of high finance and the world of Sumo both demonstrate that the illusion of purity can not only hide corruption it can help to make it possible. In Sumo when whistleblowers stepped forward to expose corruption they were not treated kindly. ibid.
Two weeks before the press conference both men died in the same hospital, on the same day, from the same mysterious respiratory ailment. ibid.
Another mysterious death haunted Sumo. This time it was a young Rikishi in training. ibid.
Despite clear evidence of brutality the police declared the young man died of natural causes. ibid.
The young boy had died at the hands of fellow wrestlers who were ordered by their stable master to punish the boy. ibid.
The New York Times for example will not use the word torture. ibid.
The only way to combat corruption says Stephen Levitt is to change rules to undo corrupt incentives. Unleash more investigative reporters and develop strong protections for whistleblowers. ibid.
What keeps us from seeing corruption are our illusions that our economy is a rational system, a free market open to all. ibid.
The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too. Stephen Covey
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favour this deceit. John Dryden
Say it ain’t so, Joe. Plea attributed to boy as Jackson emerged from hearing into bribing of Chicago players 1919 World Series
Chicago in the early twentieth century was already one of the most corrupt cities in the United States. One classic example of this was the 1919 World Series Baseball, when a New York gangsta Arnold Rothstein bribed the Chicago White Sox to lose. Police and politicians all took bribes. The Story of Al Capone
Explosive Book Rocks Baseball: Steroid Firestorm: Who used performance drugs; how and where they did it; what they say about it now: Fury Over Conseco Revelations. Daily News February 2005
Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball. George Mitchell, December 2007
Everybody that I know in the game of baseball uses the same stuff I use. (Baseball & Steroid & Cheat & Doping) Mark McGwire
The only reason I took steroids was for my health purposes. I did not take steroids to get any gain for any strength purposes. Mark McGwire
Performance-enhancing drugs are an illusion. I wish I had never gotten involved with steroids. It was wrong. It was stupid. Mark McGwire
The steroids I did were on a very, very low dosage. I didn’t want to take a lot of that. I didn’t want to look like Arnold Schwartzenegger or Lou Ferrigno. Mark McGwire
‘No, he’s a gambler.’ Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: ‘He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919.’
‘Fixed the World Series?’ I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. F Scott Fitzgerald
Canseco and others had transformed their bodies by taking heavy doses of Anabolic steroids. Ken Burns, Baseball: The Tenth Inning I, PBS 1994
Professional baseball players were free to take whatever they wanted. ibid.
Steroid-inflated home run records had replaced day to day heroics. Ken Burns, Baseball: The Tenth Inning III
The game’s steroid problems hit the front pages and airwaves once again. Ken Burns, Baseball: Tenth Inning IV
Bonds testified that he had taken steroids inadvertently. ibid.
Bonds had become the symbol of the steroids era. Barry Bonds finished 2007 with 762 career home runs. ibid.
Although 89 players were named, the most sensational section of the report was devoted to allegations of extensive doping by the most successful pitcher of the last fifteen years Roger Clemens. ibid.
Some of the greatest stars in the game would also be exposed. ibid.
I’ve just been handed a piece of paper here that if it’s right it’ll be the most dramatic story out of these Olympics or perhaps any others. Desmond Lynum, BBC presenter, re Ben Johnson