Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesize and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

Suspect power more than vice.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

Corruption is just another form of tyranny.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

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

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

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

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

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

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

… J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.

Powerlessness also corrupts.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.

… the tools of despotism and corruption