#quote

The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

phrase "speak softly and carry a big stick" became a common expression after U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt first publicly used it in a 1901 speech. There was a bit more to the full statement Roosevelt used in his speech