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Who is all-powerful should fear everything.

— Pierre Corneille Cinna (1641)

Qui peut tout doit tout craindre.

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Auguste, act IV, scene ii.

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More quotes by Pierre Corneille

Brave men are brave from the very first.

Le Cid (1636)

As great as kings may be, they are what we are: they can err like other men.

Le Cid (1636)

Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy, when we have no longer anything to fear from him!

La Mort de Pompée (1643)

He who is insulted has a right to be outraged, as unpunished audacity only increases!

The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

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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.

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

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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: Pierre Corneille (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.