Mary Renault Quotes

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

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

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

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

POWER: The ability to make our fellow humans squirm, sweat and stammer on command. Often regarded as an aphrodisiac; actually a potent laxative that, whenever ingested by people in high places, causes everyone below to run for cover.

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.

You can't trust anybody with power.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Power without abuse loses its charm.

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

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

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

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.

If you were to come to Minnesota, I could have you locked up like that. That's power.

Machiavelli taught me it was better to be feared than loved. Because if you are loved they sense you might be weak. I am a man of the people and help them but it is important to do so through strength.

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.

He was always testing you. He was always testing his power.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.