Power corrupts

• Unlimited power corrupts the possessor. William Pitt
• When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. John F. Kennedy
• All power corrupts but some must govern. John le Carre
• Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. John Lehman
• Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power. William Gaddis
• Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. Eric Hoffer
• The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. David Brin
• Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely. Adlai Stevenson I
• Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton
• If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God? George Deacon
• It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power. Kim Stanley
• Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. Edward Abbey
• The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity. Eric Hoffer
• Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret. Daniel Schorr
• In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. John Kenneth Galbraith
• Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it. John C. Calhoun
• The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. Immanuel Kant
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln
• Unlimited power corrupts the possessor; and this I know, that, where law ends, there tyranny begins. William Pitt
• Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power. George Bernard Shaw
• Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action. Will Durant
• If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk. P. D. James
• With people in high office, the old – you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts. Clint Eastwood
• Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. Robert Caro
• Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. John Adams
• If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways. Arthur Koestler
• The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable. Chinua Achebe
• Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins. William Pitt
• 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
• 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
• There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power. William Henry Harrison
• 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
• 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
• Power corrupts and there is way too much corrupted power. Stand up and monitor the government that is supposed to work for us. That’s what the Tea Party represents. Ted Nugent
• Power doesn’t corrupt. It’s neutral. Someone always wants to corrupt power. It’s the way a shotgun is not a deadly weapon until someone chooses to use it irrationally. Steve Ditko
• 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
• Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. Edmund Burke
• Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don’t think it’s so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality. Jane Jacobs
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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 . Lord Acton
• 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
• 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. Lord Acton
• 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
• 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
• Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen. Huey Long
• There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. Eric Hoffer
• What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don’t want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it. Gregory Bateson

Power attracts the corruptible

• All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. Frank Herbert
• 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
• The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don’t think that the old saw about ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible. Frank Herbert

.

Fear corrupts

• 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
• Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power. John Steinbeck

.

Weakness corrupts

• 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
• It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. Eric Hoffer
• Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Eric Hoffer
• The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. Hannah Arendt

.

Powerlessness corrupts

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

.

If knowledge is power, does knowledge corrupt?

• 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
• If knowledge is power and power corrupt, does knowledge corrupt? James Moore
• Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil. Eleanor Roosevelt

.

On a lighter note

• I no longer give Power Point presentations, because I’ve come to believe that power corrupts, and Power Point corrupts absolutely. Vinton Cerf
• Power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. Vinton Cerf