Quote#Politics & Power
Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our…
Quote byWilliam Hazlitt · 1778–1830
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823), No. 156.
English (original)
Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them.
— William Hazlitt
More from William Hazlitt
The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
You know more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the colour in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty, and your animal spirits, and you will pass for a fine man.
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.