Elizabeth I Quotes

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

Power tends to corrupt if you're there too long.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

He who appears to command people but in fact accommodates himself to wrath and ambition and pleasure, … will not know how to dispose of the power

Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best..

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

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

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

Since the origin of the world there has never been a king—even if you were to select the very best—who did not in some measure abuse his authority…

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.