Absolute Power Quotes - Page 3

• King has absolute power. And what he has given he can taken away.

  Anne Boleyn

  Kings, Taken, Given

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• Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever President of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon the side of mercy."

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Sleep, Men, President

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.198, Library of Alexandria

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• Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Stars, Fate, Power

  Irvin D. Yalom (1980). “Existential Psychotherapy”, p.127, Basic Books

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• If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

  Garrison Keillor

  People, Methodists, Absolutes

  "Mark Their Names". www.nytimes.com. October 02, 2006.

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• Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.

  Philip K. Howard

  Rights, Liberty, Democracy

  Philip K. Howard (2011). “The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America”, p.171, Random House

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• 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.

  Harry Reid

  Father, Government, Abuse

  "How Schumer and Dems may have sealed Gorsuch's confirmation" by Alex Diaz, www.foxnews.com. March 19, 2017.

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• To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

  Rafael Correa

  Assuming, Power Corrupts, Experiments

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• A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.

  Edward Gibbon

  Money, Abuse, Democracy

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.567, Wordsworth Editions

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• Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Absolutes, Powerlessness

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1993). “Men and Women of the Corporation”, p.164, Basic Books

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• It has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but many it not be truer to say that to be absolutely powerful a man must first corrupt himself?

  Terence Rattigan

  Powerful, Men, Firsts

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• How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?

  Ian Mcewan

  Novelists, Outcomes, Atonement

  "Atonement". Book by Ian McEwan, 2001.

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• How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

  Ian Mcewan

  Atheist, Imagination, Forgiving

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

  Marie Lu

  Matter, No Matter What, Absolutes

  Marie Lu (2013). “Champion: A Legend Novel”, p.113, Penguin

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• Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Honesty, Power, Men

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• 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.

  Studs Terkel

  Thinking, Atoms, Splits

  "Voice of America". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. March 1, 2002.

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• 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.

  Lord Acton

  Mean, Men, Class

  "The History of Freedom in Antiquity". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1907.

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• It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Rights, Law, Ideas

  Frederic Bastiat (2017). “The Law”, p.36, Lulu.com

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• Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. For we can win a man's heart one day and lose it the next. But when we break a proud spirit we achieve something that is final and absolute.

  Eric Hoffer

  Heart, Winning, Power

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• 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.

  Eric Hoffer

  Mean, Power, Men

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.

  Michael Polanyi

  Men, Trying, Reform

  Michael Polanyi, Harry Prosch (2008). “Meaning”, p.214, University of Chicago Press

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• 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.

  Lord Acton

  Power, Support, President

  Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1887, in Louise Creighton 'Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton' (1904) vol. 1, ch. 13.

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• The pure Christian State is a State in which theological law prevails. This law attains to real power or, to be more exact, absolute power, when through its results which are identical with those of opium, it puts all parts of humanity to sleep. If some occasionally awake they carry out crimes that horrify humanity which has not yet become Christian in the full sense of the word or has already abandoned the Christian framework.

  Bruno Bauer

  Christian, Real, Sleep

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• The notion of "humanity" as a form of transcendence derives, I think, from the conviction that intellectuality possesses an absolute power, from the demand that our best behavior depends on our ability to think abstractly, in terms of a universal rule, about something called humanity, that we need to understand humanity abstractly so that we can act responsibly towards those who represent it.

  Talal Asad

  Thinking, Humanity, Needs

  "Do Muslims Belong in the West? An Interview with Talal Asad". Interview with Hasan Azad, www.jadaliyya.com. February 3, 2015.

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• I tend to be more arrogant on stage. Far more ignorant. I sometimes say what I think and sometimes say the opposite of what I think and the lines get blurred, but I can only hope that some kind of absolute power transcends.

  Sarah Silverman

  Thinking, Opposites, Ignorant

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I made mistakes. My supporters and I failed to prevent a main like [Mikhail] Saakashvili from acquiring absolute power. I should have criticized him earlier on.

  Irakli Okruashvili

  Mistake, Should Have, Made

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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