Fanny Kemble Quotes

Overly concentrated power, whether in public, private or even in civic hands is an invitation to abuse.

Kings are but men, are subject to all the passions and frailties of human nature, and consequently are too prompt to grasp at arbitrary power, and to wish to make all things bend and submit to their will & pleasure.

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.

You can't trust anybody with power.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

When you give the government an inch, they take a mile.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

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.

... a consolidation of unchecked and despotic power in the House of Representatives ...

You know, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

Kings are not the only tyrants. The conduct of the long Parliament will justify in adding that the Kings are not the severest tyrants.

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Those who have the power and should be the most responsible are often the least responsible.

Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.

You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it.

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.

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.