With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
Great men are almost always bad men.
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.
Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.
Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible.
If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.
Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.