Lord Canton once stated "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely-. As seen throughout history, power has the capability of metamorphosing an individual. Due to the sudden change, one might become the fountain of evil, constantly overflowing with exploitations of unlimited rule. Individuals strive to achieve absolute power during their lifetime. Furthermore as they do so, previous benevolent hopes and dreams adjust to the malignant and treacherous human nature. .
Works of literatures such as A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Animal Farm by George Orwell illustrate this pattern of corruption. In A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge is one of the most vivid portrayals of power corruption. At first, she is a victim of absolute power in pre-revolutionary France. She has been exposed to cruelty exercised by the aristocracy. As a young girl, Madame Defarge witnesses torture and then the eventual death of her family members. Thus, she develops an inevitable lust for vengeance. She becomes a revolutionary in hopes of obliterating injustice of the hierarchy, only to fall into the appealing but volatile arms of corruption. Throughout the novel, the author does not justify only elucidates Defarges' motives for such ruthlessness. The blood-thirst elicited by Madame Defarge is derived from the desire of vengeance, first formed at witnessing a cruel murder of her family. Dickens attempts to imply, Madame Defarge's hatefulness does not reflect any inherent flaw, but rather results from the oppression and personal tragedy that she has suffered at the hands of the aristocracy, specifically from the family of Evrémondes. In addition, Dickens describes the tireless and infinite cycle of oppressed becoming the oppressed. Based on the cycle, as targets of tyranny gain more power and control, the dreaded abuses of power are only doomed to repeat once again. Another example illustrating Lord Canton's quotation is Animal Farm by an English writer, George Orwell.
Absolute Power! What is absolute power? ... Absolute power may be considered to be the abuse of power delegated to a person or country. ... No one has the right to have absolute power over others. Power they may well have, but absolute it can never be. ...
Absolute Power! What is absolute power? ... Absolute power may be considered to be the abuse of power delegated to a person or country. ... No one has the right to have absolute power over others. Power they may well have, but absolute it can never be. ...
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." ... Absolute power always becomes corrupt. "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." ... Absolute power always becomes corrupt. ... "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." ...
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely In the early 1840's, Frederick Douglass wrote an autobiography of his life as a slave. ... The second was the corrupting influence the power of slavery had upon the slaveholder. ... The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced it's infernal work" (2). ... Due to his master's explanation of why his mistress shouldn't teach him, a slave, to read, Douglass realizes exactly where white society gets its power to enslave black society. ... Douglass conveys to his readers the drastic change that too...
Locke argued that people had natural rights and liberties that allowed man to do whatever he wanted to do without the arbitrary or absolute power of another man. ... Prior to the revolution, the British Parliament was certainly an arbitrary and absolute power over the colonies. ... English radicals such as Joseph Priestly and James Burgh collected ideas from Enlightenment and oppositionist authors and found that "at the heart of all political relationships raged a struggle between the aggressive extension of artificial power and the natural liberty of the people." ...
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." said Lord Acton in a letter to his friend. ... Charles I is a obvious example of the corruption of power. Another figure in the corruption of power was Louis XIV. ... He had complete power iver the traditional sections of power: foreign policy, the church, and taxes. ... The corruption of power was brought up again by Peter the Great in Russia. ...
Power is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. ... In society, humans are often found taking advantage of others to gain absolute control/ power, it is human nature. An example of an abuse of power takes place in George Orwell's fable, Animal Farm. ... Squealer purposefully plugs thoughts of fear into the animal's minds to show the consequences of the pigs not in power. ... The ability to manipulate is what marks great power. ...
Both were dictators with a strong sense of nationalism and both believed themselves to be the absolute ruling. ... Benito Mussolini came into power in 1922 Italy by means of the "March of Rome." ... He used strict censorship to limit other political parties from trying to rise into power. ... Like fascist ideology, Mussolini was anti-democratic because he wanted to be the absolute ruler and achieved this when he became dictator of Italy. ... Had their power been used for good rather then the evil it turned into, history might have been different. ...
That being said, I acknowledge Hobbes' ability to form a persuasive argument for an absolute sovereignty, however his depiction of the state of human nature greatly underestimates the capacity of human compassion thus his theory of absolute sovereignty has the potential to be further developed. ... The desires for security of the basic necessities of life as well as our inability to be perfectly contempt with the power we already have are the fundamental conceptions in explaining why competition is prevalent in the state of nature, since the measures of one's power is relative to t...
