“The dirty little secret is that Congress no longer wants the accountability that goes with the wielding of power.”

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

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Patrick Buchanan 111
American politician and commentator 1938

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“Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.”

Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter X (p. 133)
Context: A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.

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“Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U. S. government policy. … Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power.”

Benjamin Page (1939) Professor of Decision Making

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“Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les Employés http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Employ%C3%A9s [The Government Clerks] (1838), translated by James Waring; also known as Bureaucracy, or, A Civil Service Reformer.
Context: As routine business must always be dispatched, there is always a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world. Possibly Napoleon retarded its influence for a time, for all things and all men were forced to bend to his will; but none the less the heavy curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing to be done and the right man to do it. Bureaucracy was definitely organized, however, under a constitutional government with a natural kindness for mediocrity, a predilection for categorical statements and reports, a government as fussy and meddlesome, in short, as a small shopkeeper's wife.

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“Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts, and all Roosevelt's friends know that his restless and combative energy was more than abnormal.

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