Neal Katyal Quotes

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I found that out when I was Attorney General in Massachusetts.

Bush’s crimes are … more worrisome than Clinton’s. He has taken powers and … is adopting standards that are a terrible anathema to our people...He claims powers that even King George did not claim at the time of the Revolution.

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

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

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

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 have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

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.

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

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

A President, acting like a king and claiming the powers of a king, is committing an impeachable offense…. Bush has claimed that to protect the nation, there is nothing he cannot do. Spy on Americans, torture, kill someone in their own home. He does not admit to any limitation on his power as long as he believes he is protecting the country.

All executive power --- from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators --- has the outward appearance of efficiency

In all ages wherever a tyrant has shown himself he has always found some willing judge to clothe that tyranny in the robes of legality.

Since the origin of the world there has never been a king—even if you were to select the very best—who did not in some measure abuse his authority…

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny.

The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared.... The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.

Power corrupts; but absolute power is really neat.

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

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.

Human experience long ago taught us that if we allow a man or group of men autocratic powers in government or church, that they use the powers to oppress and defraud the public..