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Lord Acton

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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. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

John Dalberg-​Acton, 1st Baron Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton (April 5, 1887), published in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)

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