Absolute Power Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  Lord Acton

  Exercise, Men, Influence And Power

  "Historical Essays and Studies". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, oll.libertyfund.org. 1907.

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• 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.

  Lord Acton

  Government, Democracy, Majority

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• The family code in Egypt is one of the worst family codes in the Arab world. Polygamy. The husband is having absolute power over the family.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Husband, Egypt, World

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• 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.

  Robert Caro

  Believe, Book, Taught

  "Robert Caro: a life with LBJ and the pursuit of power". Interview with Chris McGreal, www.theguardian.com. June 9, 2012.

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• What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

  Barack Obama

  Government, Two, Worry

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

  Boyd Rice

  Exercise, People, Interest

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• People say I'm a nice girl saying terrible things. I tend to say the opposite of what I think. You hope that the absolute power of that transcends, and reaches the audience.

  Sarah Silverman

  Girl, Nice, Thinking

  "Quiet Depravity" by Dana Goodyear, www.newyorker.com. October 24, 2005.

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• The last thing our founding fathers wanted was to be ruled by king with absolute power, and the next to the last thing they wanted was to be ruled by a temporary king with absolute powers for four years.

  Patrick Leahy

  Father, Our Founding Fathers, Temporary

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority...

  Lord Acton

  Exercise, Men, Influence And Power

  "Historical Essays and Studies". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, oll.libertyfund.org. 1907.

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• Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

  Lord Acton

  Wisdom, Freedom, Mean

  Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.19, VM eBooks

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• I think all of our human Experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Thinking, Giving, Human Experience

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• The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

  Lord Acton

  Rights, Government, Class

  "Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1913.

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• The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

  John Adams

  Political, Arbitrary, Fundamentals

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. November 13, 1815.

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• [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

  John Locke

  Men, Thinking, Blood

  John Locke (2015). “The Second Treatise of Civil Government”, p.82, Broadview Press

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• Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

  John Lehman

  Power, Confusion, Political

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• Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.

  Lucan

  Wisdom, Wish, Politics

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• Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Trying, Moral

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2010). “The Old Regime and the French Revolution”, p.45, Anchor

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• With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

  Clint Eastwood

  People, Office, Power Corrupts

  "Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio Interview, J Edgar". www.moviesonline.ca.

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• Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.

  Alexis Carrel

  Believe, Pride, Thinking

  "Saiva Siddhanta" by Saiva Siddhanta Mahasamajam, volume 21, p. 59, 1986.

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• Absolute power demoralizes.

  Lord Acton

  Absolutes

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• Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J.P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?...Gods don't think they can become men.

  Dennis Lehane

  Men, Thinking, Differences

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• If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Years, Would Be, Revolutionary

  Mikhail Bakunin, Emma Goldman, Subcomandante Marcos “NASI-onalisme ?”, bukuLIAT

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• 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.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Real, Character, Adversity

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.680, Library of Alexandria

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

  Seneca the Younger

  Wisdom, Long, Politics

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• 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.

  Donald Phillip Verene

  Jobs, Book, Advice

  Donald Phillip Verene (2013). “Moral Philosophy and the Modern World”, p.134, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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