Moliere Quotes

Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.

There are no honorable rulers.

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.

It's great to be queen!

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

After having won a scepter, few are so generous as to disdain the pleasures of ruling.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

Ambition, in a private man is a vice, is in a prince the virtue.

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.

Politics ruins the character.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

If there are no superior people to look after a population, the common people have no security.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,--the “spoils,” so called, “of office.” And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks.

If you want to test a man's character, give him power.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who will contract out the messy things in life: the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show: and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

Some powerful people who were not emperors, yet were just as powerful as emperors, were followed by an entourage of officials

The ruler will be interrogated not only about his own unjust deeds but also about those of his staff

… the imaginations of men are exceedingly prone to deify and worship them [kings]; though, to the great misfortune of mankind, they are more commonly fiends, than angels.

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence

when greed and fear are linked to power, you have a dangerous mix. We see that in political life. In part of the world, the mix of greed and fear means that those who get power become reluctant to give it back. One of the many things I like and admire in our democracies are the norms that make our leaders hand over power when voters tell them to

Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.|

Ethics and power are separate.

I can understand the individual who is driven by biases. I can sit with him across the table and can talk to him, deal with him. But bias in the man whom we put in the seat of power and who decides to play on it... That man will destroy the very fabric of the nation.