Unchecked Power Quotes

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

I think one of the things about Donald Trump that's interesting is he lives in a rarified atmosphere where it's possible that he doesn't get enough feedback, enough people rolling their eyes at him. It's a danger more in show business than it is with wealth.

The greatest threat to our freedom is an all powerful federal government.

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

In 2014, we were opposing President Xi Jinping. Five years later, we are opposing Emperor Xi Jinping.

No people do as much harm as those who go about doing good.

It can't happen here is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10 mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe.

Power is poison. Its effects on Presidents had always been tragic; chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bar the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.

Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

... the perfect dictatorship.

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every private employer a dictator, every financier a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at his mercy, and no public responsibility.