#2,925

It is not in the hands of popular majorities where power is most easily perverted; it is in the hands of the semi-educated.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 467

#2,853

The majority of the tasks that this century’s typical ruler believes he is obliged to assume are nothing more than abuses of power.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 457

#2,527

Each one of man’s new conquests is the new plague that punishes his pride.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,525

Man pays for the powers he acquires over the world by giving up the meaning of things.
To construct the theory of wind one must renounce the mystery of a whirlwind of dry leaves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,502

Man conceals under the name of liberty his hunger for sovereignty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 403

#2,436

Man already possesses enough power that no catastrophe is improbable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 392

#2,132

Power does not corrupt; it frees up latent corruption.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,016

The only man who should speak of wealth or power is one who did not extend his hand when they were within his reach.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#1,894

Power more surely corrupts the man who covets it than the man who exercises it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 310

#1,542

Power does not necessarily corrupt anyone except the revolutionary who assumes it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,490

Only by establishing hierarchies can we limit the imperialism of the idea and the absolutism of power.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 251

#1,437

Cynicism is not a measure of astuteness but of impotence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 243

#1,221

To be effective, the abuse of power presupposes the anonymity of the oppressor or the anonymity of the oppressed.
Despotisms fail when unmistakable faces confront each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 213

#572

Popular consent is an index of legitimacy, but not a cause.
In the debate over the legitimacy of power neither its origin in the vote nor its origin in force counts.
Power is legitimate if it fulfills the mandate which the vital and ethical necessities of a society confer on it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 108

#384

The legitimacy of power depends not on its origin, but on its ends.
Nothing is forbidden to power if its origin grants it legitimacy, as the democrat teaches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#307

A work of art has, properly speaking, not meaning but power.
Its presumed meaning is the historical form of its power on the transitory spectator.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 67