| Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989. | | | |
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| | | NUMBER: | 1443 |
| AUTHOR: | John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834–1902) |
| QUOTATION: | 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. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | LORD ACTON, letter to Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887.—Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, pp. 335–36 (1972). |
| SUBJECTS: | Power | | |
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