Jean de La Fontaine Quotes

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

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Clever tyrants are never punished.

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

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.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

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.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

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

Powerlessness also corrupts.

It is mad and preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and humanity the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror.

The possession of power does not necessarily imply its unrighteous or oppressive use, although it generally awakes suspicion.

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

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.

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

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

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

You can't trust anybody with power.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Power is always a corrupting influence.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.

So the people will pay the penalty for their kings' presumption, who, by devising evil, turn justice from her path with tortuous speech.

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.