"Man is insatiable for power; he is infinite in his desires, and, always discontented with what he has, he loves only what he has not. People complain about the despotism of princes; they should complain about that of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch of Asia to the child who smothers a bird with his hand for the pleasure of seeing something in the world weaker than himself."
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Joseph de Maistre, Against Rousseau (1795), p. 133
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Power
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