Top 100 Quotes About Absolute Power
#1. What they didn't tell you about absolute power was that it was never absolute; the instant you had it, someone had already lined up to try to take it away. Princes could sleep soundly, but never kings. The ear was always tuned for the creak on the
Dennis Lehane
#2. The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.
Albert Camus
#3. Well, I have an interest in power. I have an interest in people who find themselves in the position to exercise absolute power.
Boyd Rice
#4. If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.
Mikhail Bakunin
#5. Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
Eric Hoffer
#6. Lijuan warned Raphael I'd make him a little bit mortal.'
'You have.' Quiet equanimity. 'And you worry you've weakened him. You have.'
Elena flinched. 'Elena.'
Shaking his head, Keir waited until she met his gaze again. 'Even an archangel needs a weakness - absolute power is a corruption.
Nalini Singh
#7. Absolute power has corrupted and the absence of checks and balances seems complete.
Patricia Cornwell
#8. Coin didn't protect you. It didn't save you from your secrets. Only absolute power did that. He
C.J. Redwine
#9. There is no greater gift than realizing the constant presence of the Divine and His Absolute Power to create and restore all things.
Marta Mrotek
#10. The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government,
Harry Reid
#11. If you are an eighteen or nineteen-year-old with little education, as is often the case, and you're put in charge of many, many people on the other end of the world, you have absolute power and you're not prepared for it.
Yaroslav Trofimov
#12. Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#13. Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.
Alexis Carrel
#14. The Book of Job is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of nature. Leviathan is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of the state.
Donald Phillip Verene
#15. There are times when a nation desires a king or a dictator; times of confusion and uncertainty when they go down on their knees to one man and beg him to accept absolute power over them.
Peter Green
#16. Imagination, which in truth
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And reason, in her most exalted mood.
William Wordsworth
#17. Knowlede is power and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power or the Power of Truth, which is constantly shaping events and circumstances to reveal the errors in our beliefs.
Matthew A. Petti
#19. 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.
Eric Hoffer
#20. Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.
Lord Chesterfield
#21. The family code in Egypt is one of the worst family codes in the Arab world. Polygamy. The husband is having absolute power over the family.
Nawal El Saadawi
#22. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
#23. Pierre Bordieu was right: "The all powerful is he who does not wait but makes others wait. Absolute power is the power to make oneself unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to place them in total uncertainty by offering no scope for their capacity to predict."
Michael Jackson
#24. In battle, refusal or hesitation to follow orders can spell disaster. But at the same time, the rigid hierarchy and absolute power of officers slows down execution and stifles rapid adaptation by the soldiers closest to the fight.
Stanley McChrystal
#26. Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.
Eric Hoffer
#27. God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men.
Gerrit Smith
#28. No human being, man, woman, or child, may safely be entrusted to the power of another; for no human being may safely be trusted with absolute power.
Suzanne La Follette
#30. Absolute power is absolute power, no matter what it's called.
Marie Lu
#32. Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
David Brinkley
#33. Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in
the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
Irvin D. Yalom
#34. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
#35. It is something about having absolute power over another being that drives men to incomprehensible acts of cruelty.
Mark Tufo
#37. The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
John Acton
#38. Do you know what love is? Love is an absolute power of self-totality. Love is not what you think love is. Love is a strength. Love is a goodness, like Godliness. There is no limit to it. There is no shortage in it. There is no bargaining in it.
Harbhajan Singh Yogi
#39. Victory is possible, sisters, not by figuring out how to make this an easy process, but by choosing - over and over and over again - the absolute power available through God's truth.
Lysa TerKeurst
#41. With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
Clint Eastwood
#42. It is an almost precise inversion of Lord Acton's observation: the more power we have over our children, the more we are willing to sacrifice for them. Love transfigures power. Absolute love transfigures absolute power. And power transfigured by love is the power that made and saves the world.
Andy Crouch
#43. I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely.
Charles Kennedy
#45. The government here is entirely in the hands of the army. The Grand Signor [Ottoman Sultan], with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as any of his subjects, and trembles at a janissary's frown.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
#46. We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Robert Caro
#47. Rights are more reliable than the kindness of someone who has absolute power over you.
Rebecca Solnit
#48. Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character.
Orrin Woodward
#49. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
from Steelheart (Reckoners #1)
by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson
#50. They've worked the absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely truth since the beginning of time. They foment destruction and chaos. It puts them in their happy place.
Nina Bangs
#51. I know, better than anyone else, that there are no heroes coming to save us. There are no good Epics. None of them protect us. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We
Brandon Sanderson
#52. It's very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don't agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power.
Mark Pellegrino
#53. Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.
Robert Shea
#54. That no matter how good their intentions, with absolute power comes corruption.
Gennifer Albin
#55. It has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but many it not be truer to say that to be absolutely powerful a man must first corrupt himself?
Terence Rattigan
#56. the German sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky wrote that "absolute power is a structure, not a possession.
Anne Applebaum
#57. No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures.
Seneca The Younger
#58. Let what I here set down meet with correction or applause, it shall be of equal welcome and utility to me [...]And yet, always submitting to the authority of their
censure, which has an absolute power over me, I thus rashly venture at everything.
Michel De Montaigne
#59. The ethics of psychiatric therapy is the very negation of the ethics of political liberty. The former embraces absolute power, provided it is used to protect and promote the patient's mental health. The latter rejects absolute power, regardless of its aim or use.
Thomas Szasz
#60. You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely?' It's the same with powerlessness.
Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein
said everything had changed since the atom was split,
except the way we think. We have to think anew.
Studs Terkel
#61. There is a fear of God that adoration enfolds with arms of thanks. It acknowledges the absolute power of the Creator and the inconsequence of man. This holy and reverent fear is the beginning of wisdom, for it is wise to know one's place in this world...and in the next.
Cheryl Zelenka
#62. Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#63. As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
Thomas Sowell
#64. A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon
#65. That's what terrorism is, basically - pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.
Dorothy Gilman
#66. Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
Frank Herbert
#67. What makes a narcissistic mother so scary? Her absolute power and controlling influence. A narcissistic mother is your only 'friend,' at least until you're old enough to go to school.
Koren Zailckas
#68. Over the times thou hast no power ... Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.
Thomas Carlyle
#70. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
Howard Nemerov
#71. I made mistakes. My supporters and I failed to prevent a main like [Mikhail] Saakashvili from acquiring absolute power. I should have criticized him earlier on.
Irakli Okruashvili
#72. To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.
Rafael Correa
#73. It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.
Frederic Bastiat
#74. Maximum Sustained Power (MSP) training is a novel approach that improves absolute power,
Mark Sisson
#75. Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
Lord Acton
#76. That a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.
Thomas Paine
#77. When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.
Clive James
#78. I think all of our human Experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part
Louis D. Brandeis
#79. The essential point of Nineteen Eighty-Four is just this, the danger of the ultimate and absolute power which mind can develop when it frees itself from conditions, from the bondage of things and history.
George Orwell
#80. Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the ... heart and spirit of men who resist power?
Woodrow Wilson
#81. this absolute power of God over man is counterbalanced by the idea that man is God's potential rival.
Erich Fromm
#82. People say I'm a nice girl saying terrible things. I tend to say the opposite of what I think. You hope that the absolute power of that transcends, and reaches the audience.
Sarah Silverman
#83. If absolute power corrupts absolutely,
does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
Harry Shearer
#84. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?
Garrison Keillor
#85. Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.
Peter Mansfield
#86. Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
Lord Chesterfield
#87. You have the absolute power to change someone's life with kindness.
Curt Mega
#88. No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.
Thomas Paine
#89. I tend to be more arrogant on stage. Far more ignorant. I sometimes say what I think and sometimes say the opposite of what I think and the lines get blurred, but I can only hope that some kind of absolute power transcends.
Sarah Silverman
#90. A stone thrown up into the air is bound to fall down, and absolute power is like a huge stone thrown up into the air.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#91. [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.
John Locke
#92. What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.
Barack Obama
#93. Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J.P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don't think they can become men.
Dennis Lehane
#95. Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.
Lucan
#96. As in the Divine Right of Kings, hierarchies invest those who preside at the top of their pyramidal structure with absolute power to rule over the lesser ranks that spread down like a marble staircase to the broad foundation stones of those with no power at all.
Eugene Kennedy
#97. Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power.
Pierre Corneille
#99. No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.
Jacques Ellul
#100. God does not call men to make Jesus Lord (as though they had such power), but to live in absolute submission to the Lord He has made.
Paul David Washer
