James Burnham Quotes

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.

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

We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

You are afraid of the one, I, of the few.... You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy.

Inequality of rights and power proceeds from the very Author of nature, from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

You know, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

As men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

'Game of Thrones' has never much concerned itself with shining a torch on the powerless. Their hunger and suffering in a land ravaged by war is of little concern to the story's most powerful characters, whose antics bring so much pain to the people.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.