Simone Weil Quotes

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

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

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

I think the greatest lesson that power has to teach us is, once you've had it, once you are a part of it, you're never free.

I think it's a dangerous thing for anyone to have power over other people.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.

The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

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

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

If a guy can bully you, he will bully you.

People who are in a position of power like to throw their weight around, and that becomes abuse.

When you abuse someone, you limit their perspective, and you trap them in your view of them or your view of the world.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you.

Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.

The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.