Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.
Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.
Power tends to protect itself merely to maintain its own status and control. Principle gives up power for the sake of creating the best public policy.
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
It is the safeguard of the strongest that he lives under a government which is obliged to respect the voice of the weakest.
But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.
The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.
It is a universal and fundamental political principle that the power to protect can safely be confided only to those interested in protecting, or their responsible agents - a maxim not less true in private than in public affairs.