The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9)

by Charles Stross

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. —Lord Acton

Cardinal Richelieu: “Give me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find something in it with which to hang him.”