Experience suggests that Lord Acton was right. "Power tends to
corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
People with power may start off with good intentions, wanting to
use their powers for the good of others, but usually they end up
using it for their own benefit. The more power people have, the
more pronounced is this tendency.
But we cannot avoid power. So we need to understand how and why
power tends to corrupt, so we can do our best to avoid this
The process of corruption
Power tends to corrupt
I seek to do good things.
The things I do are for the greater good.
Sometimes you have to balance the good which is done against the
occasional harm which is needed to achieve that good.
The harm I do is all for the greater good, and is therefore
anything which harms or distracts me harms the organisation or nation
power tends to produce paranoia
I am identified with the organisation
disloyalty is treason
I need to know who can be trusted, so I need to know things they don't know I know
It's all for the greater good.
It takes a brave person to disagree with the person in power.
Good intentions do not protect you from the corruption caused by
Good people do bad things for good reasons.
Power brings responsibility and obligations.
The person with power has an obligation to achieve certain
things for the sake of the organisation and its goals, and
these things are seen as being good because they are good for the
If you care about the organisation, you want to support it,
which sometimes means you have to do bad things for the greater
The more you do bad things, the more you become used to doing
bad things and the more you become a bad person.
The fact of someone having power tends to produce corruption
within the organisation.
Power always exists within a system and a structure.
The person with power has an obligation to concentrate on the
big and important issues.
Everybody wants the person with power to know about the small
details which matter to them.
The system must limit what is communicated to the person with
power, so they are not overwhelmed and distracted by it.
Power always isolates and insulates the person with power from
the consequences of their decisions.
The person with power does not see the people who are harmed
by their decisions.
The organisation does harm which cannot be acknowledged.
Note 1. The quotation is from a letter from John Emerich Edward
Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834-1902) to Bishop Mandell
Creighton in 1887.