Voltaire Quotes

The big tyrants never face justice.

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

Those who exercise power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the appearance of justice.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

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

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

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

That king who through folly rashly oppresses his kingdom, (will), together with his relatives, ere long be deprived of his life and of his kingdom. As the lives of living creatures are destroyed by tormenting their bodies, even so the lives of kings are destroyed by their oppressing their kingdoms

That which killed my late master, & so many of his predecessors. The responsibility of arbitrary power.

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.

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

That's how dictators get started.

Man is not by nature a tyrant, but becomes a tyrant by power conferred on him.

Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,-- Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

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.