George Mason Quotes

The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation.

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.

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

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

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.

The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people

In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want — not only you, your whole family and all people like you.

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

You can't trust anybody with power.

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

Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.

Whoever is new to power is always harsh.

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.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

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.

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.

Feelings of marginalization and cries of separation are symptomatic of countries where rulers find power sweet and intoxicating, where power is coveted, and when acquired, painstakingly guarded.

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

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny.

Power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will be ever liable to abuse.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.