Authority Misuse Quotes

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

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.

It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.

If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.

Some people are in charge of pens who shouldn't be in charge of brooms.

The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.

Criminals gravitate into government positions like natural law.

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…

There's very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

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.

Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.

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

… a clear abuse of judicial power

Beware the abuse of Power. Both by those we disagree with, as well as those we may agree with

Power is, in its nature, encroaching; and such is the human make that men who are vested with a share of it are generally inclined to take more than it was intended they should have.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

I think there was an absolute, deep gap between consensual relations between adults, which people may like or dislike, and people who physically impose themselves on children or misuse their authority to impose on children.

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

While we must condemn any misuse of their authority, let's not forget that, by far, police are fulfilling their duty to protect and serve.

It seems to me that kings and queens can be fools when they forget what they are and act like who they are, but they're worse when they only remember what they are and forget who.

A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired. This maxim, drawn from the experience of all ages, makes it the height of folly to intrust any set of men with power which is not under every possible control; perpetual strides are made after more as long as there is any part withheld.

It is not the misuse of power that is evil; the very existence of power is an evil.

Whenever the powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists.

I don't respond to authority figures who abuse their authority.