Daniel Schorr Quotes

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

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

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.

... all of our human experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part.

Nothing's as dangerous as power with impunity.

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.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

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.

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

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

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.

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.

What did the President know and when did he know it?

Men are never very wise in the exercise of a new power.

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.

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.

It's very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don't agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.