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Great power is almost always a great evil.

— Letitia Elizabeth Landon Romance and Reality (1831)

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More quotes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.

Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
Intense delicious throbs!

The Improvisatrice (1824)

And Love is like the lightning in its might,
Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.

The Golden Violet (1827)

His heart is like a maggot-eaten nut:
There's nothing in it ; but 'tis closely shut.

Knowledge, when only the possession of a few, has almost always been turned to iniquitous purposes.

Romance and Reality (1831)

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Letitia Elizabeth Landon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.