SUMMARY
Leaders of nations need good advisors.
ANALYSIS
This is one of the rare proverbs concerned with the nation, not the individual. The warning is against the concentration of power in too few individuals or in one individual, or against leaders who do not take counsel with advisors. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” as Lord Acton is reported to have said in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887. This is the case for a system of checks and balances in governments.
