Excessive Power Quotes

Empires implode from within due to their own excesses.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.

I always say that when a country wins with such overwhelming might, it's bad news for that country.

Having excessive power in the hands of one country meant the fate of the world was too dependent on what happened in that one country.

More power than any good man should have, and more power than any other kind of man ought to have.

The human mind is too apt to rush from one extreme to another; it appears, by the objections that came from the different States … For now the cry is power, give Congress power. Without reflecting that every free nation, that hath ever existed, has lost its liberty by the same rash impatience, and want of necessary caution.

We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators.

Giving people like Dodd and Frank more authority is like rewarding an arsonist with gasoline and matches.

I’ve never formally been number 1 in the Party, but everybody keeps hanging around me, showing me deference. I have to give the nod on every important decision. I carry too much weight and that is not good for the Party or the state.

Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.

The Pope should restrain himself and get his fingers out of the pie.

My mother used to say when we were children, 'When a boy gets a stick in his hand, his brains run out the other end of it.' Power is a stick in the hand, and I have never heard of anybody who wielded a very big stick of power whose brains did not run out the other end. As a nation, our brains are running out the other end of our power right now.

[I]t is true that [the provisions of the Bill of Rights] were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century whenever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many.

No one should have a key that turns a billion locks. It shouldn't exist.

The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

We have built something [a nuclear stockpile] bigger than we can drive.

Immoderate power, like other intemperance, leaves the progeny weaker and weaker, until nature as in compassion covers it with her mantle and it is seen no more.

Excess is the common substitute for energy.

There can never be a complete confidence in a power which is excessive.

Little sins are great when great men commit them.

In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already.

The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.

The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.