Eric Hoffer Quotes

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

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

No government which governs by the use of force can survive except by force. There is no going back because force begets force and the perpetrators of crimes live in fear that they might become victims in their turn.

We would rather be feared than respected.

Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.

Let people hate you so long as they fear you.

Tyranny is always weakness

I am more and more convinced, of the propensity in human nature to tyranize over their fellow men.

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race

Authority is quite degrading.

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

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.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

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

There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

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