Douglas Adams Quotes

You can't trust anybody with power.

John McCain knows as well as anyone that Sarah Palin has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. I'm sorry, it's got nothing to do with the fact that she wears skirts - she's grossly unqualified.

Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise and humility. Almost none manages to do so.

I'm not saying that women leaders would eliminate violence. We are not more moral than men; we are only uncorrupted by power so far. When we do acquire power, we might turn out to have an equal impulse toward aggression.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

President Lincoln is timid, vacillating, and inefficient.

[Referring to his successor:] The present imbecile chief.

A ruler must learn to be other than good.

Corruption in Nigeria is blocking development even though they have all this oil wealth.

It is not the misuse of power that is evil; the very existence of power is an evil.

Every institution goes through three stages — utility, privilege, and abuse.

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim to the top

I think water seeks its own level, that we go through challenges to become better. And now more than ever, it's good to look at who you're following in any type of hierarchy or institution - be it a church or the government. We can see how easy it is for people to lose their footing when they have great power.

There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence.

A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired. This maxim, drawn from the experience of all ages, makes it the height of folly to intrust any set of men with power which is not under every possible control; perpetual strides are made after more as long as there is any part withheld.

In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.

Power is the test. Some, once they have it, are content to buy the show of liking, and punish those who withhold it; then you have a despot. But some keep a true eye for how they seem to others, and care about it, which holds them back from much mischief.

Beware the abuse of Power. Both by those we disagree with, as well as those we may agree with

Money is power, and rare are the heads that can withstand the possession of great power.

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

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

The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.