Lysander Spooner Quotes

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

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Power is poison. Its effects on Presidents had always been tragic; chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bar the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.

If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

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

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

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.

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

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

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

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

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

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

Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost.

This demonstration of power, indifferent to the law, is highly dangerous.

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.

I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely.

A vile and overbearing temper becomes sometimes, in one long accustomed to the exercise of power, unendurable to those who are subject to its humors.

The scum of the People are most Tyrannical when they get the Power, and treat their Betters with the greatest Insolence.

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

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

Power over men is itself a satisfaction, besides providing opportunity to better one's circumstances with a minimum of exertion. Hence, the lust for power increases with its enjoyment and restraint is added to restraint. The government instituted to prevent men from transgressing one another's equal rights thus tends to become a transgressor of the rights of all. The injustice is far more oppressive than anyone man can do unto another, and the interests of freedom can be served only by restraint of government.