Dan Foster Quotes
Power long entrusted either to single persons, or to bodies of men, generally increases itself so greatly as to become subversive of the intentions, and dangerous to the rights of those who delegated it.
Dan Foster, 1748-1810, Connecticut Protestant Minister, Essay, London Evening Post, June 30, 1774
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Perhaps the most famous quotation in all of Political Science is this one. What is fascinating is that 74 years earlier, Shelly, the most famous of the English Poets expressed the same idea in one of his great poems. See {627920}. The last sentence of this quote is often excluded.
There was a rumor that Napoleon BonaparteII, Emperor of the French, was seriously ill, and when asked what the complaint was, a distinguished foreign guest remarked:
Madison went on to observe that in a democracy, the real power may reside in the majority of the population, and in such a case the tyranny of the majority is the danger.