“You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything”
Source: November
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Gustave Flaubert98
French writer (1821–1880) 1821–1880Related quotes
“Immunity corrupts; absolute immunity corrupts absolutely.”
John W. Campbell (1910–1971) American science fiction writer and editor
Editorial in Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine (1970)
“Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1943) American economist
Slightly edited version of text in Men and Women of the Corporation, Basic Books, 1977
“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian
Letter http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1407&Itemid=283 to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504; also in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)<br>Paraphrased variant: All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. <br class="br">Context: I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. 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. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Commonly quoted on many websites, this quotation is actually from an address by President Gerald Ford to the US Congress (12 August 1974) http://www.bartleby.com/73/714.html <br class="br">Misattributed
Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer
Interview in The Observer, 1990
“Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.”
Julia Cameron (1948) American writer
Blessings (1998)
“Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.”
Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time
Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 10 (p. 107)