Absolute Power quotes:

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If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? -- Harry Shearer
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians. -- David Brinkley
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
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true. -- Eric Hoffer
God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men. -- Gerrit Smith
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
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
Absolute power demoralizes. -- Lord Acton
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. -- Eric Hoffer
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?? -- George Deacon
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible. -- Frank Herbert
Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice. -- Lord Chesterfield
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
The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power. -- Albert Camus
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
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
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
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
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
No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people. -- Thomas Paine
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity. -- Eric Hoffer
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. -- Lord Acton
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. -- Barry Goldwater
Bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. Weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us...No longer is the quest for disarmament a sign of weakness, (nor) the destruction of arms a dream - it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race. -- John F. Kennedy
Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power. -- Robert Shea
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. -- John F. Lehman, Jr.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton
Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power. -- Pierre Corneille
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
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
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
What makes a narcissistic mother so scary? Her absolute power and controlling influence. A narcissistic mother is your only 'friend,' at least until you're old enough to go to school. -- Koren Zailckas
I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely. -- Charles Kennedy
Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler. -- Mohamed ElBaradei
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
The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition. -- John Acton
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. -- Eugene Kennedy
Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely. -- Rudolph Rummel
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. -- John F. Lehman, Jr.
Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character. -- Orrin Woodward
No power was total, no power permanent, no power absolute. -- Justina Chen
Absolute power is absolute power, no matter what it's called. -- Marie Lu
The absolute truth is that there is no power in celebrity. -- Bill Cosby
When one reaches absolute power, one loses total contact with reality. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures. -- Seneca the Younger
You have the absolute power to change someone's life with kindness. -- Curt Mega
The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. -- Frank Herbert
The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute. -- Charles de Gaulle
The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity. -- Eric Hoffer
Separation of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political power. -- Edward Kennedy
Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist. -- Lucan
How can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god? -- Ian Mcewan
Existence is beyond the power of words to define: Terms may be used But are none of them absolute. -- Witter Bynner
The power to think as you wish to think is the only power over which you have absolute control. -- Napoleon Hill
We know that God's being is perfect, His essence infinite, His dominion absolute, His power unlimited, and His glory transcendent. -- Charles Spurgeon
With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts. -- Clint Eastwood
PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it. -- Ambrose Bierce
Over the times thou hast no power. . . . Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest. -- Thomas Carlyle
It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
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
Imagination, which in truth Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason, in her most exalted mood. -- William Wordsworth
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
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? -- Woodrow Wilson
As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill. -- Thomas Sowell
One man saying that everything is wrong can command coast-to-coast attention in living color, a power not given to an absolute monarch a century ago. -- Walter Wriston
Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[...]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action. -- Steven Brust
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
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay. -- Eric Hoffer
God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power. -- Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
No human being, man, woman, or child, may safely be entrusted to the power of another; for no human being may safely be trusted with absolute power. -- Suzanne La Follette
God does not call men to make Jesus Lord (as though they had such power), but to live in absolute submission to the Lord He has made. -- Paul Washer
The first and absolute requirement of strategic air power in this war was control of the air in order to carry out sustained operations without prohibitive losses. -- Carl Andrew Spaatz
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. -- Howard Nemerov
Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul. -- Hans Hofmann
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. -- Joan Didion
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
I cannot guarantee people absolute fairness. I can only promise that I will do everything in my power to secure fairness or create a greater degree of fairness. -- Martin Schulz
Either faith in Christ can cleanse all people of their sin, or none, but not some... The truth of Christ's death, resurrection and power over sin is absolute. -- Rick Perry
We have to awaken ourselves into that new awareness by which we can know the absolute truth and we can know that Divine power which is surrounding us. -- Nirmala Srivastava
It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. -- Murray N. Rothbard
It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. -- Murray N. Rothbard
[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
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
Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it. -- Lord Chesterfield

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