Great men are almost always bad men.
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority...
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
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.
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.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
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?
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God??
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
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. 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.
or simply:
