Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

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.

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.

... all of our human experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesize and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Politics without responsibility IS fascism.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

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.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

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

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely