Lord Acton's maxim is "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The dumbed down paraphrases lose most of the insight. It's a little maste

Lord Acton's maxim is "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The dumbed down paraphrases lose most of the insight. It's a little masterpiece of the English language, and as you note, who or what exactly is being corrupted, absolutely or otherwise, is intentionally underspecified.