
“Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
As quoted in Crown's Book of Political Quotations : Over 2500 Lively Quotes from Plato to Reagan (1982) by Michael Jackman, p. 160
“Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
First Inaugural Address http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25831 (4 March 1913)
1910s
Acceptance Speech http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm as the Republican Presidential candidate, San Francisco (July 1964)
Unsourced variant: Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
Context: Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
"Not Funny Enough (2)" (1991).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
“Parties cannot by consent give to the Court a power which it would not have without it.”
In re Ayhner; Ex parte Bischofishiem (1887), L. J. 57 Q. B. 168.
Can Socialism come by Constitutional Methods? (1933), p. 2, quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151.
Leninism or Marxism? (1904)