"Power is not alluring to pure minds...." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson
Power is not alluring to pure minds.
More by Thomas Jefferson
“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
“Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.”
“As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.”
More on Power
“I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying "Open!" was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.”
“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
“Never say, ‘No’, never say, ‘I cannot’, for you are infinite. Even time and space are as nothing compared with your nature. You can do anything and everything, you are almighty”
More on Virtue
“There is no virtue if there is no immortality.”
“There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.”
“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”