Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely Quotes by Lord Acton, Mark Pellegrino, Studs Terkel, Frank Herbert, John Lehman, Harry Shearer and many others.
Great men are almost always bad men.
It’s very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don’t agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
You know, ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’? It’s the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
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.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.
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