Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote:
It is easy for people to abuse authority when they want to - decide to - abuse authority. But further, such cases are not an "abuse of authority." They are an abuse of a human being. And quite honestly, having been in such positions of authority with vulnerable human beings, I cannot - internally - conceive of such a desire.
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Lord Acton of course famously said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But the Anglo-Saxons had a slightly different take, expressed in the maxim:
Man deþ swa he byþ þonne he mot swa he wile. "A man does as he is, when he may do as he wills."