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