Ernesto Cortes Jr. Quotes

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

Power is always a corrupting influence.

Power tends to get confused with repression.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

… the tools of despotism and corruption

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

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

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.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Watch out for the man who talks of putting things in order. Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

There is no more contemptible poison than power over one's fellow men.

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

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

Necessity, the tyrant's plea.

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

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

I think it's a dangerous thing for anyone to have power over other people.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

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

Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.