Christianity and Power Politics (1936)
Context: In the simple and decadent individualism of the Oxford group movement there is no understanding of the fact that the man of power is always to a certain degree an anti-Christ. "All power," said Lord Acton with cynical realism, "corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely." If the man of power were to take a message of absolute honesty and absolute love seriously he would lose his power, or would divest himself of it. This is not to imply that the world can get along without power and that it is not preferable that men of conscience should wield it rather than scoundrels. But if men of power had not only conscience but also something of the gospel's insight into the intricacies of social sin in the world, they would know that they could never extricate themselves completely from the sinfulness of power, even while they were wielding it ostensibly for the common good. (Chapter 29: "Hitler and Buchman")
“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
Source: Man's Search for Meaning
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Viktor E. Frankl 64
Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust surviv… 1905–1997Related quotes
“Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!”
To the Countess of Cumberland. Stanza 12, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.”
“Man has no nature”
History as a System (1962)
Trachiniæ, 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: I want to speak to you first of all as regards your duties as boys; and in the next place as regards your duties as men; and the two things hang together. The same qualities that make a decent boy make a decent man. They have different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common-sense he is a pretty poor creature; and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.