Top 1200 Absolute Power Corrupts Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. "yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.

Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

No power was total, no power permanent, no power absolute.

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.

I don't know if power seduces less or more. I think power is a constant evolving mechanism that, since the dawn of time, on one level corrupts and on another level does not. But I think, no matter what, mutates.

Well, I have an interest in power. I have an interest in people who find themselves in the position to exercise absolute power.

Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the ... heart and spirit of men who resist power?

You can't relate to an absolute or it wouldn't be absolute, it would be relative. On an intellectual level, that's easy. However, you hear theologians in the theistic traditions talk about absolute God, and I saw God, or God spoke; speaking, being seen, these are all relational things. So what is absolute about such a being, wouldn't actually be absolute.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor; and this I know, that, where law ends, there tyranny begins.

Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant. . . . In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.

Absolute power demoralizes.

Well, I have an interest in power. I have an interest in people who find themselves in the position to exercise absolute power

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.

Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.

In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.

As in the Divine Right of Kings, hierarchies invest those who preside at the top of their pyramidal structure with absolute power to rule over the lesser ranks that spread down like a marble staircase to the broad foundation stones of those with no power at all.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures.

The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.

All power corrupts but some must govern.

I strongly believe that the Founding Fathers of our country got it right: power corrupts, and any time you have too much power concentrated in one place, it tends to get abused, so checks and balances are always needed.

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.

How do I know pornography depraves and corrupts? It depraves and corrupts me

It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state... And absolute security is absolute slavery.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.

He who practices Tasawwuf without learning Sacred Law corrupts his faith, while he who learns Sacred Law without practicing Tasawwuf corrupts himself. Only he who combines the two proves true.

The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before.

Remember, the left corrupts everything, folks. The Democrat Party, the left corrupts every institution. They politicize it, and by virtue of that alone they corrupt it. And so at the NSA, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the CIA, and at the FBI, there are Obamaites, there are people that think like he.

The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies' playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar.

The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil.

All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely.

I belive power can be used for good, I don't think every form of power is absolute evil. I wish I would have stepped in, and I really regret it. And that's why I really encourage young people who are organizing to speak up.

Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power.

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one's own rules.

Power corrupts. If the Church is given too much power, it will become corrupted. So to keep the Church in line with the teachings of Christ, we must make sure that it can never have temporal power. Religion has its place and politics has its own. These two should not be mixed together or the result would be catastrophic.

Absolute power is absolute power, no matter what it's called.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

The Book of Job is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of nature. Leviathan is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of the state.

Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.

The power to think as you wish to think is the only power over which you have absolute control.

That's what Judith Herman is saying, and she's absolutely right. Power then breeds an intensification of all because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

For anyone with the traits - of feeling himself victimized, of seeking to be the strongman who resolves everything, yet sees truth only through his own self and negates all other truth outside of it - is bound to become more malignant when he has power. Power then breeds an intensification of all this because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

Turn yourself inside out. Live with absolute certainty that you have the power to create anything that you desire-anything!-because the power you need is the power of the Universe flowing through you.

The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?

the old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes.

If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.

Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.