Apollonius of Tyana Quotes

Since the origin of the world there has never been a king—even if you were to select the very best—who did not in some measure abuse his authority…

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.

The possession of power does not necessarily imply its unrighteous or oppressive use, although it generally awakes suspicion.

The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious senility, incapacity, and corruption.

Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant.

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

We've seen the hubris. And now we're seeing the scandals.

One of the things you learn as a journalist is that when there's no accountability, we humans are capable of tremendous avarice and venality. That's true of union bosses - and of corporate tycoons. Unions, even flawed ones, can provide checks and balances for flawed corporations.

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 believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

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

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.

I had enabled the development of a corrupt system right under my very eyes..

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

Washington is a cesspool of non-accountability.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

It's hard to tell whether [Attorney General] Janet Reno is engaged in a cover-up or she's merely incompetent.

I never will ascribe to this government [Liberal Party] such wrongdoing as mere stupidity will explain.

This career [politics] of plundering and blundering.

Power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will be ever liable to abuse.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

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

The world will go on much as it did before; and be always quite bad enough to allow bribery and corruption, jobbery and nepotism, quackery and arrogance, their full influence over our home and foreign policy.

Princes, sovereigns, and king have not been given supreme authority in order to live in luxurious self-indulgence and debauchery. They have not been elevated by their fellow-men to enable them to strut about and to insult with their pride the simple-mannered, the poor, and the suffering. They have not been placed at the head of the State to keep around themselves a crowd of idle loafers whose uselessness drives them towards vice. The bad administration which may be found in monarchies springs from many different causes, but their principal cause lies in the character of the sovereign