There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

From John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902) in a Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504; also in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972).

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

It seems like in earlier times there was a greater focus on the values and behaviors aspect of Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Values, and Behaviors (KESVB). Today we focus on KES. But it is something of a confusion. KES and VB function together, as the driver and the horses; one without the other is of little use. Today our focus is on making sure everyone has the knowledge, experiences, and skills to succeed whereas in elder times, I suspect, there was a greater awareness of just how critical were the values and behaviors.

More and more researching amasses indicating that while we have always wanted schools to focus on KES, more and more, failures occur because of the absence of VB and not necessarily because of shortfalls in KES.