Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

He loved politicians - even Republicans.

He loved politicians - even Republicans.

Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'etre to the imperfection of man and can read more

Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'etre to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.

When the people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

When the people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

Power tires only those who do not have it.

Power tires only those who do not have it.

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.

Well, I'm not a crook.

Well, I'm not a crook.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the read more

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.