Power Quotes

A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

~ Georges Clémenceau

Anger can be managed to becomeemotional content that raises power.

~ Toba Beta

We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

~ Harry Shearer

After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.

~ John F. Kennedy

I think the most powerful thing a woman can have is confidence.

~ Rowan Blanchard

A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

~ Agnes Repplier

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)

~ Saul Bellow

You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.

~ Wallace Stegner

Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

~ Leo Tolstoy

It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.

~ Frank Beddor

You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.

~ David Baldacci

And power without compassion is the worst kind of evil there is.

~ E.j. Patten

If I had a nickel for every time I'd wished I possessed the power to alter another person's mind, I'd be knee deep in nickels.

~ Mayandree Michel

The fairy tale belongs to the poor...I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.

~ Erik Christian Haugaard

Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face t

~ Jared Diamond

Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

They were way more interested in learning the alphabet or whatever than they were in learning how to rip a moose in half with their bare hands. Then make a helmet out of its skull. Then to use that helmet to help kill more moose. Collect the skull helmets. Combine. Assemble. Super moose skull helmet. Infinite power.

~ Bratniss Everclean

Don't make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must

~ Tim Dorsey

When he is most powerful, nothing does he become.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

The absolutely awesome incredible power of belief is the genie in your life.

~ Eldon Taylor

In the beginning, the taste of power is sweet, savored on the tongue, like fine wine. It whispers promises in your ear and pretends to be your friend. It is easy to become addicted to this feeling.

~ Rahma Krambo

The world is a much more beautiful and incredible place than you think, and each of us has a great deal of power to make it more so.

~ Oie Osterkamp

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear.

~ Gustave Le Bon

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

~ Alain De Botton

We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.

~ Junot Díaz

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

~ Orson Scott Card

Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.

~ John Christopher

But isn't it likely that everyone in this world...has killed someone or other on their way to the top?...All I wanted was a chance to be a man--and for that, one murder is enough.

~ Aravind Adiga

Power changes its appearance but not its reality.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

~ Toni Morrison

Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Mage-taught wisdom reproached him: any gift of power was two-edged.

~ Janny Wurts

When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.

~ Brian Ruckley

Believers infiltrate the enemy’s territory with knowledge and power.

~ Sherry K. White

Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.

~ Karen Maitland

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.

~ Howard Zinn

In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

~ Abraham Lincoln

One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.

~ Jean Genet