Pope Gregory VII Quotes

The kings are ravenous beasts, their ministers are dogs.

[A] representative of... a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood.

… the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

That king who through folly rashly oppresses his kingdom, (will), together with his relatives, ere long be deprived of his life and of his kingdom. As the lives of living creatures are destroyed by tormenting their bodies, even so the lives of kings are destroyed by their oppressing their kingdoms

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

As soon as these people (the ceremonialists) had set themselves up in the temple of God to rule in the place of Christ, they began to grow in pride, greed, and arrogance, to decrease in spirituality, to distribute grace and indulgences, to assume to themselves all the power and authority of God, to forgive sins, and to loose and bind as if they themselves were the Holy Spirit. In this way they have fallen away from Christ and from all spiritual discernment; in this way also, they have burdened the whole of Christianity with the heavy yoke of servitude and have led many souls into a maze of utter confusion, which is even to this day a pitiful sight to behold.

O, you anarchic scum, you cowardly murderers, you leeches upon honest labor, you midnight assassins!

Those who have no sense of right, reason or religion, have a natural propensity to make use of their strength to the destruction of such as are weaker than they.

Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

I didn't want to kill a man. I'm not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant.

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.

Being rapacious and arrogating subject's goods and women is what above all else ... renders the Prince hateful ... and leaves a mind obstinate to vengeance.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

Emperor Napoleon is nothing but an ordinary king who tramples on human rights.

Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.

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 most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motive.