Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely Quotes

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.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

Great men are almost always bad men.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

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.

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.

Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

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?

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God??