I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
— Lord Acton
Lavish Power Is Corrupting Absolute Power quotations
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes.
The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.
Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.
[...]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action.
A small amount of power corrupts a small man absolutely.
A little knowledge is dangerous to a little man. To a great man only great knowledge is dangerous.
With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
There is no evidence to support the belief that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ever questioned Americas power. He questioned only the President's John F. Kennedys readiness to use it. Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (1966) Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end.
It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.
Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.