Josephus Quotes

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.

Men are such power-seeking creatures, and they usually kill people to get to the throne.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state..

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

The bulk of mankind have indeed, in all countries in their turn, been made the prey of ambition.

He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers, is the decay of the whole age.

Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

He who appears to command people but in fact accommodates himself to wrath and ambition and pleasure, … will not know how to dispose of the power

The savage and brutal barbarity of our enemies … is a full demonstration of that there is not the least remains of virtue, wisdom, or humanity in the British Court

To Than Shwe, a kingdom in return for the eternal soul is just the right egregious trade-off. Than Shwe is a general who carries the light of unbounded ambition.

I'm fascinated by power, by those that can be publicly generous and privately ruthless.

Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principle motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.