John Adams Quotes

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.

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.

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

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

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 corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

You can't trust anybody with power.

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.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

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

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

Mobutu does not think he is God.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

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

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

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon.

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

The tyrant is only the slave turned inside out.

The chief bandit is the head of the state himself.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.