Hafsat Abiola
Hafsat Abiola

Unlike the small community, where every person lives in the illusion of having the same ideals, beliefs, and values as everyone else, in the larger context of plural communities — be it in country, continent, or globe — we live in the illusion of absolute difference.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton

The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton

Although, therefore, the theory of nationality is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism, it has an important mission in the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom, — the absolute monarchy and the revolution.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1. Baron Acton

I have shown you how Machiavelli supplied the immoral theory needful for the consummation of royal absolutism; the absolute oligarchy of Venice required the same assurance against the revolt of conscience. It was provided by a writer as able as Machiavelli, who analyzed the wants and resources of aristocracy, and made known that its best security is poison.

Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams

Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken —

John Adams
John Adams

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie
Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie

Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl.
'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything.
Ever.

Bertie Ahern
Bertie Ahern

The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody.

Ethan Allen
Ethan Allen

Certain it is, that any supposed obstructions, concerning the quality or temperature of any or every one of those worlds, could not have been any bar in the way of God Almighty, with regard to his replenishing his universal creation with moral agents. The unlimited perfection of God could perfectly well adapt every part of his creation to the design of whatever rank or species of constituted

beings, his Godlike wisdom and goodness saw fit to impart existence to; so that as there is no deficiency of absolute perfection in God, it is rationally demonstrative that the immense creation is replenished with rational agents, and that it has been eternally so, and that the display of divine goodness must have been as perfect and complete, in the antecedent, as it is possible to be in the

subsequent eternity.