Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister.
formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate
There's nobody telling Oprah what to do. There's no one telling David Letterman what he can and can't do. You've got to have 100 percent support from everybody who's behind the show, across the board.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it.
The right of initiative...belongs exclusively to ME, and is indissolubly bound to the autocratic power entrusted to ME by GOD....No one is called to take upon himself before ME petitions about the general welfare and needs of the state. Such departures from the order established by existing legislation can only hinder me in the execution of MY aims
Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled.
I'm in a unique position - I can do what I want.
I'm just kind of taking a break now and enjoying the freedom of making my own choices. When you're on a television show for six years, they run your schedule.
Love's dominion, like a kings, admits of no partition.
This is my wish,; so I command: Let my will take the place of reason.
As you sit there and as I sit here, they are going in. They're taking over, and they just walk in and they can do whatever they want. They have essentially already taken it over.
I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power.
Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.
Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.
Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.
Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.
Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.
To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.
