Δεν θυμόταν αρθρογράφος των Νέων σε χτεσινό άρθρο την προέλευση της ρήσης «
Δεν διαφθείρει η εξουσία αλλά ο φόβος της απώλειάς της». Χρήσιμο είναι ολόκληρο το λήμμα με θέμα την εξουσία που διαφθείρει, power corrupts, στο
Safire's Political Dictionary — μέχρι τον Στάινμπεκ στο τέλος:
power corrupts
A charge usually made by Outs against Ins to persuade voters that it's “Time for a change”.
In a speech in the House of Lords in 1770, William Pitt the Elder declared: “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.” That observation, while possibly original, did not quite sing. Sir John Acton later amended it to the more forceful: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In loose quotation, the Acton qualifiers tend to be removed absolutely, leaving only “power corrupts.”
Lord Acton’s famous maxim was quoted frequently when Franklin Roosevelt was being chided for trying to pack the Supreme Court. John F. Kennedy also touched on the idea; honoring Robert Frost at Amherst College in October 1963, President Kennedy said: “When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."
Some see politics as an inevitable sullier of souls. In a 1945 essay on “The Evil of Politics and the Ethics of Evil,” Hans Morgenthau wrote: “Only the greatest dissenters of the age have been clearly aware of this necessary evilness of the political act. A great non-liberal thinker writing in the liberal age, such as Lord Acton, will find that ‘power corrupts... absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ or he will, like Jacob Burckhardt, see in politics the ‘absolute evil’; or, like Emerson, in force ‘a practical lie’ and corruption in every state.”
Others have been less gloomy. “Power does not corrupt men,” George Bernard Shaw wrote. “Fools, however, if they get in a position of power, corrupt power.” In The Short Reign of Pippin IV, novelist John Steinbeck wrote: “The King said: ‘Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of a loss of power.’ ”