Samuel Freeman Miller Quotes

The scum of the People are most Tyrannical when they get the Power, and treat their Betters with the greatest Insolence.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

Whoever is new to power is always harsh.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Power is poison. Its effects on Presidents had always been tragic; chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bar the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.

If you give human beings power over others, their natural tendency is to be fascists.

Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good with their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

The sin of all time has been the exercise of assumed powers. This is the essence of tyranny.

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.

You can't trust anybody with power.

All military regimes use security as the reason why they should remain in power. It's nothing original.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

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.

Hateful is the power, and pitiable is the life, of those who wish to be feared rather than loved.