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About this quote

What does it mean?
Human nature tends toward tyranny when power is unchecked.
In plain terms
Anyone would become a tyrant if they had the power to do so.
What can you take from it?
Power corrupts and checks are necessary.

Where it applies

  • political leadership
  • organizational management
  • personal conduct

Putting it to work

  • limit authority
  • implement checks
  • audit power

Questions to consider

  • What power do you hold?
  • How would you use it?

Another view

Not everyone seeks power or acts tyrannically even when able.

More from Daniel Defoe

  1. Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallib…

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  2. The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.

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  3. Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!

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