Joseph R. Biden Jr. Quotes

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

People who are in a position of power like to throw their weight around, and that becomes abuse.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

You can't trust anybody with power.

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.

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.

A vile and overbearing temper becomes sometimes, in one long accustomed to the exercise of power, unendurable to those who are subject to its humors.

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

We did not find it difficult to deal with Bush and his administration, because it is similar to regimes in our countries - both types include many who are full of arrogance and greed.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim, denounces it, and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

If you give human beings power over others, their natural tendency is to be fascists.

The Arrogance of Power

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

Those who exercise power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the appearance of justice.

It [the treaty with Algeria] has been dictated at the mouths of our cannon..

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

Any political or philosophical agenda can and will be perverted by power and/or fear.

See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.

Authority is quite degrading.

Harassment is about power---the undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate.

Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds.