Absolute Power Quotes

Everything within the State. Nothing outside the State. Nothing against the State.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

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.

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.

I began life as an absolute monarchist - on condition, of course, that I be that monarch.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Know, sir, that the first place in the empire is mine. From God I hold my power and my crown, and I depute them to no man--I alone reign in Austria.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No Bishops, no King.

I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite.

In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.

Fundamentalist religion is the most pervasive vision of central planning, though many fundamentalists may oppose human central planning as a usurpation or "playing God.This is consistent with the fundamentalist vision of an unconstrained God and a highly constrained man.

The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands of others the submissiveness of sheep.

There never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

An unbridled democracy is exactly similar to a tyranny. Its objects and instruments are the worst, and both are equally served by the tamest of mankind. It is always to lord it as a sovereign; it therefore has its flatterers in the shape of demagogues. Ancient customs must be done away with; ancient ties, civil and sacred, must be broken; everything must be changed according to new and false theories; and the result is an assimilation of democratic to tyrannical government, in its habits and modes of action.

For the Fascist, everything is the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.

Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

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.

The easiest way to establish a dictatorship is to claim you are God's representative on earth.

The Sovereign is absolute; for there is no other Authority but that which centers in his single Person, that can act with a Vigor proportionate to the Extent of such a vast Dominion.

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.