"Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them"
About this Quote
Power, Byrnes implies, doesn’t just corrupt; it chemically alters. “Intoxicates” is a ruthless verb choice: it frames authority as a drug that flatters the ego, dulls moral judgment, and makes withdrawal unthinkable. The line rejects the comforting civics-class fantasy that leaders will step aside once their term is up or their mission is complete. In Byrnes’s telling, power doesn’t leave politely. It has to be pried loose.
The grammar does a lot of political work. “Men” is both literal (the era’s overwhelmingly male leadership class) and archetypal: the statement is about the psychology of officeholders, not one villain. Then comes the blunt absolutism of “never voluntarily surrendered.” No qualifiers, no “rarely,” no room for the exceptional statesman. That rhetorical severity is the point; it’s designed to steel citizens against naivete.
The final sentence is the kicker: “It must be taken from them.” Passive civic hope turns into active civic duty. Byrnes is not romanticizing revolution so much as insisting on mechanisms of extraction: elections that actually bite, checks and balances with teeth, watchdog institutions, party discipline, labor power, protest, and public scrutiny. If power is intoxicating, then democracy is less a self-correcting machine than a sobriety program that only works when people enforce it.
Context matters. Byrnes lived through the New Deal’s expansion of federal authority and the wartime/early Cold War national security state, and he helped build parts of that machinery. The quote reads as both warning and confession: a man who knew the seductions of proximity to power reminding you not to expect restraint from those who benefit most from keeping it.
The grammar does a lot of political work. “Men” is both literal (the era’s overwhelmingly male leadership class) and archetypal: the statement is about the psychology of officeholders, not one villain. Then comes the blunt absolutism of “never voluntarily surrendered.” No qualifiers, no “rarely,” no room for the exceptional statesman. That rhetorical severity is the point; it’s designed to steel citizens against naivete.
The final sentence is the kicker: “It must be taken from them.” Passive civic hope turns into active civic duty. Byrnes is not romanticizing revolution so much as insisting on mechanisms of extraction: elections that actually bite, checks and balances with teeth, watchdog institutions, party discipline, labor power, protest, and public scrutiny. If power is intoxicating, then democracy is less a self-correcting machine than a sobriety program that only works when people enforce it.
Context matters. Byrnes lived through the New Deal’s expansion of federal authority and the wartime/early Cold War national security state, and he helped build parts of that machinery. The quote reads as both warning and confession: a man who knew the seductions of proximity to power reminding you not to expect restraint from those who benefit most from keeping it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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