Jean Francois Paul de Gondi Quotes

The princes who have done great things are the ones who have taken little account of their promises.

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.

Sometimes you have to do bad things to get into power so you can do good things when you get there.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

If one must do a wrong, it's best to do it pursuing power-otherwise, let's have virtue.

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.

The problem with politics isn't the money; it's the power.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

Only a lunatic would want to be president. These lunatics are created deliberately by those who wish to be presided over.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage.

Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

There they are. See no evil, hear no evil, and...evil.

Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

Big institutions in this imperial state, in this evil US empire, prepare their politicians to become criminals.

The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

Power is neither good nor evil.