Quotes on Power And Corruption

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

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.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. ... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.

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

Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.