James F. Byrnes Quotes

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

Suspect power more than vice.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

People who are in a position of power like to throw their weight around, and that becomes abuse.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Aggression is simply another name for government.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power.

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.

Power tends to get confused with repression.

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

Power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, "Give, give!

Powerlessness also corrupts.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.