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March 13, 2005
What a peevish fool was that of Crete/That taught his son the office of a fowl!
Cheminformatician Peter Murray-Rust directly quotes Edward Tufte's Wired essay from September 2003 when he starts one of his presentations with the warning that Power Corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
Tufte himself is of course paraphrasing - who? Marx? "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". But no - to my surprise it turns out to be historian Lord Acton (1834-1902). The full quotation is rather wise and is relevant today:
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
And the title of this entry (a spurious attempt to link hubris to Office ...) is of course from Henry VI, Part 3: Act V, Scene vi, referring itself to the legend of Dædalus and Icarus.
Posted by daen at March 13, 2005 03:58 AM