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1 " At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our freedoms, or as owners of our very selves. It is the only way that we can imagine ourselves as completely isolated beings. There is a direct line from the new Roman conception of liberty – not as the ability to form mutual relationships with others, but as the kind of absolute power of " use and abuse" over the conquered chattel who make up the bulk of a wealthy Roman man's household – to the strange fantasies of liberal philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, about the origins of human society in some collection of thirty- or forty-year-old males who seem to have sprung from the earth fully formed, then have to decide whether to kill each other or begin to swap beaver pelts. "
2 " Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful. "
― Bangambiki Habyarimana , Pearls Of Eternity
3 " Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible. "
― Frank Herbert
4 " Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. "
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , A Man Without a Country
5 " Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men’s way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of nature, but of things that are outside nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. "
― Baruch Spinoza , Complete Works
6 " If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? "
― Harry Shearer
7 " A stone thrown up into the air is bound to fall down, and absolute power is like a huge stone thrown up into the air. "
― Mehmet Murat ildan , Galileo Galilei
8 " All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely. "
― Alasdair MacIntyre , After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
9 " In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything. "
― Chinua Achebe , Home and Exile
10 " As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill. "
― Thomas Sowell , The Quest for Cosmic Justice
11 " It’s not just absolute power that the Founders sought to prevent. Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad. The Founders may have trusted in God, but true to the Enlightenment spirit, they also trusted in the minds and senses that God had given them. They were suspicious of abstraction and liked asking questions, which is why at every turn in our early history theory yielded to fact and necessity. "
― Barack Obama , The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
12 " Drama!" said Mr. Hitchens.Robin Shrugged. " That's what terrorism is, basically--pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together." " Absolute power," mused Mrs. Pollifax. " Like monstrous children thumbing their noses at adults who live by codes and laws and scru "
13 " Knowlede is power and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power or the Power of Truth, which is constantly shaping events and circumstances to reveal the errors in our beliefs. "
― Matthew A. Petti , The Metaphysics of Truth -Unobserved Realities and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Apocalypse Now, #1)
14 " We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. "
― Robert A. Caro
15 " Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. "
16 " Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true. "
17 " God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men. "
