Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

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

The chief bandit is the head of the state himself.

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.

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.

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.

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

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

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

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

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

In a free government, the few, finding their schemes and views of interest borne down by the many, to gain the power they cannot constitutionally obtain, always endeavor to get it by cunning and corruption, conscious at the same time that usurpation, when once begun, the safety of the usurper consists only in grasping the whole.

Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best..

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

A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

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.

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