How Power Corrupts Quotes & Sayings

No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself. — John Connolly

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what makes information valuable. For knowledge to be useful, it must be acted upon. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834 - 1902). All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950). We must never take our freedom for granted. — Al Zelczer

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

Many evils spring from power," he said. "Even from the power to do good. All power corrupts, and the intention to do good has little influence on the corruption. Either my words will last after me and be believed by men, or else they won't. Yet if one thing were required to kill them certainly, it is that my words should be spread after my death by the power of money. No teaching could survive a campaign of paid advertising. — Nevil Shute

Knowledge is a dangerous thing. But ignorance is no protection. — Masha Du Toit

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

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

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. — Eric Hoffer

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. — Immanuel Kant

The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not. — George Lucas

If knowledge is power and power corrupt, does knowledge corrupt? — James Moore

Knowledge is power, isn't that what we say? But power corrupts. An institution based on knowledge and learning can't help but be a corrupt institution. — Sam Cabot

Too much power is never a good thing. It corrupts even the strongest. — Lara Adrian

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable. — Chinua Achebe

But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary. — Robert A. Caro

He always says that those who control the present can rewrite the past. — Anne Fortier

It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible. — Frank Herbert

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

Power largely consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality, even if you have to kill a lot of them to make that happen. In this raw sense, power has always been very much the same everywhere; what varies is primarily the quality of the reality it seeks to create: is it based more on truth than in falsehood, which is to say, is it more or less abusive to its subjects? The answer is often a function of how broadly or narrowly the power is based: is it centered in one person, or is it spread out among many different centers that excercise checks on one another? And are its subjects merely subjects or are they also citizens? In principle, narrowly based power is easier to abuse, while more broadly based power requires a truer story at its core and is more likely to protect more of its subjects from abuse. This rule was famously articulated by the British historian Lord Acton in his formula Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. — Philip Gourevitch

Ed, knows power corrupts, they'll have experienced that first-hand. They'll see how I'd be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they'll buy — Margaret Atwood

I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely. — Charles Kennedy

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

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud. — Thomas Szasz

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. — George Orwell

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action. — Will Durant

You wouldn't know what it's like to grow up privileged and powerful. It's intoxicating. Watching how people defer to you, and to your parents. Power reeks from your pores, and it infects people around you. Power corrupts, envelops, entices . . . The more powerful my father becomes, the more he fears losing it. — Robert Bryndza

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. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind. — Edmund Burke

Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. — John F. Lehman Jr.

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.... — Edward Gibbon

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts. — Clint Eastwood

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. — Edward Abbey

Power corrupts on an equal-opportunity basis. — Jacqueline Novogratz

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

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

Doctors need to be held accountable, since power corrupts. There must be complaints procedures and litigation, commissions of enquiry, punishment and compensation. At the same time if you do not hide or deny any mistakes when things go wrong, and if your patients and their families know that you are distressed by whatever happened, you might, if you are lucky, receive the precious gift of forgiveness. — Henry Marsh

It is not just power, but impotence, that corrupts people. It gives them the mind and soul of slaves. It makes them indifferent, lazy, cynical, irresponsible, and, above all, stupid. — John Holt

We cannot use the Ruling Ring. That we now know too well. It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil. Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider — J.R.R. Tolkien