Power Quotes

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.

~ Margaret Atwood

Powerful people have no regrets.

~ Gregory David Roberts

... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

~ Mercedes Lackey

You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.

~ Kathleen Hanna

To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

~ John Stuart Mill

Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.

~ John Ratzenberger

When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.

~ Wendy Mass

If I look at the mass I will never act.

~ Mother Teresa

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light. A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained. The darkness paused for breath. They erupted.

~ Sarah J. Maas

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

~ Thucydides

Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough.

~ Libba Bray

Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.

~ Ian Fleming

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

~ Toni Morrison

Sexual energy between two people is a primal force comprised of power (energy that moves toward another) and virtue (knowing the energy between the two is right).

~ Alexandra Katehakis

There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Of course, it was impossible, in this company, not to think about balances of power. Raffin and Bann glanced at each other now and then, sharing silent agreement, teasing each other, or just resting their eyes on each other, as if each man was a comfortable resting place for the other. Prince Raffin, heir to the Middluns throne; Bann, who had no title, no fortune. How she longed to ask them questions that were too nosy for asking, even by her standards. How did they balance money matters? How did they make decisions? How did Bann cope with the expectation that Raffin marry and produce heirs? If Randa knew the truth about his son, would Bann be in danger? Did Bann ever resent Raffin’s wealth and importance? What was the balance of power in their bed?

~ Kristin Cashore

The power behind words lies with the person.

~ Renee Ahdieh

I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.

~ Whitney Young

Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.

~ Brandon Sanderson

It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant(Isabella)

~ William Shakespeare

Stand up for who you are. Respect your Self and ignite the divine sparks in you. Access your powers. Choose your rights and work together with others to bring blessings into the lives.

~ Amit Ray

People with power always take advantage of those without power.

~ Christopher Pike

If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately in the world then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel know and value deeply.

~ Judith Plaskow

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

~ Kahlil Gibran

I know that love is about power, too. Who gives, who takes. Who is willing to risk showing their true self.

~ Alison Goodman

You have more power than you think. Be careful what you do with it.

~ Paula Stokes

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

~ Leo Tolstoy

For to be wise and love exceeds man's might.

~ William Shakespeare

But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people.

~ Kristin Cashore

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

You may be a lady but you are still the man!

~ Lynda Barry

Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

~ Philip K. Dick

Harness the power of today. Seize the blessings of today! Make something happen, enhance your life, make someone laugh, help a friend, love, love, love!

~ Steve Maraboli

Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.

~ Isaiah Berlin

There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations

~ Michel Foucault