Top 76 Quotes About Power Corrupts
#1. The old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato 's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes.
Oswald Mosley
#2. 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
#3. Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret.
Daniel Schorr
#5. 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
#6. Knowledge is power, power corrupts. Study hard, be evil.
Anonymous
#7. 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
#8. It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible.
Frank Herbert
#9. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
#10. Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
Ted Nelson
#13. 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
#14. 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
#16. Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
John Adams
#19. If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
Barbara Tuchman
#20. If absolute power corrupts absolutely,
does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
Harry Shearer
#21. I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts.
Jonathan Haidt
#22. When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
John F. Kennedy
#24. If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.
P.D. James
#25. It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.
Frank Beddor
#26. One of the (many) problems with government is not that power corrupts or even that it is magnetic to corruptible people; rather, it is that we have been conditioned to tolerate corruption in power, and so we don't even try to hold our politicians accountable.
Michel Templet
#27. Knowledge is power, isn't that what we say? But power corrupts. An institution based on knowledge and learning can't help but be a corrupt institution.
Sam Cabot
#28. It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
David Brin
#29. The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not.
George Lucas
#30. If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.
Arthur Koestler
#31. Knowledge is power; power corrupts. Corruption brings shame and ruin. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is perhaps preferable to a life lived in shame.
Lauren Kate
#32. It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj
#33. I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.
Elia Kazan
#34. It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#35. It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin
#36. When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who could withstand the light? What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies about American freedom, looking into these mugs shots of the bought and sold?
Thomas Pynchon
#37. Ed, knows power corrupts, they'll have experienced that first-hand. They'll see how I'd be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they'll buy
Margaret Atwood
#38. There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.
Bayard Rustin
#40. 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
#42. Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[ ... ]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action.
Steven Brust
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
from Steelheart (Reckoners #1)
by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson
#47. 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
#48. With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
Clint Eastwood
#50. A small amount of power corrupts a small man absolutely. A little knowledge is dangerous to a little man. To a great man only great knowledge is dangerous.
Leonard J. V. Compagno
#51. I no longer give Power Point presentations, because I've come to believe that power corrupts, and Power Point corrupts absolutely.
Vinton Cerf
#52. Power corrupts the best of men.
Power destroys the worst of men.
Corrupt nations end up in turmoil.
Corrupt rulers end up in Hell.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. You can take power from others; you can steal it. It is not a very high-grade power. It will give you a certain amount of access to a better life; but it corrupts the individual.
Frederick Lenz
#56. If knowledge is power and power corrupt, does knowledge corrupt?
James Moore
#57. But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.
Robert A. Caro
#58. Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant ... In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.
John Taylor Of Caroline
#59. He always says that those who control the present can rewrite the past.
Anne Fortier
#60. It ain't power that corrupts, it's the changes you put your head through getting it.
Norman Spinrad
#61. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell
#62. It is not just power, but impotence, that corrupts people. It gives them the mind and soul of slaves. It makes them indifferent, lazy, cynical, irresponsible, and, above all, stupid.
John Holt
#63. They ordered the extermination
of all minds they couldn't control
Tupac Shakur
#64. Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts ... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
John Steinbeck
#65. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer
#66. Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
Edward Abbey
#67. Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.
Thomas Szasz
#68. Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.
Louis L'Amour
#69. The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
Chinua Achebe
#70. No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.
John Connolly
#71. The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.
Immanuel Kant
#72. Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Will Durant
#73. On the throne of the world, any delusion can become fact.
Gore Vidal
#74. Too much power is never a good thing. It corrupts even the strongest.
Lara Adrian
#75. Knowledge is a dangerous thing. But ignorance is no protection.
Masha Du Toit
#76. I don't know if power seduces less or more. I think power is a constant evolving mechanism that, since the dawn of time, on one level corrupts and on another level does not. But I think, no matter what, mutates.
Nicolas Winding Refn
