Power Quotes

In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive, for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will bend to his own will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even sensible people. In this, mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of millions of people.

~ Mark R. Levin

It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that c

~ Vera Nazarian

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.

~ Edward Abbey

The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.

~ Howard Zinn

Power is meant to be shared with the goal of empowering others. Hoarded power weakens others and exalts oneself. Power, when grounded in biblical values, serves others by liberating them. It acknowledges that people bear the image of God and treats them in a way that will nurture the development of that image. In so doing, we honor their Creator.

~ Duane Elmer

We are much too tolerant of the moral aberration of statesmen and bureaucrats.

~ Kenzaburō Ōe

Power is to be used in the service of others and only secondarily, if at all, for the benefit of oneself.

~ Duane Elmer

A determined will, grounded on a clear order of rank of values, coupled with organic strength of outlook, will also one day - despite all hindrances - enforce its realisation in all domains.

~ Alfred Rosenberg

Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

...the magic was a tool, though a natural, mysterious tool. In its awareness of the magic, his human nature had desired to connect with it, to use it. The whisperings were the voice of his own awakening, not the seductive call of a dark power. Using it was not corruption, but a natural extension of his being. And he could control the manner in which he used it. He would.

~ Derek Donais

Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s namecut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifierand the signified. Or better yet explain to the girlwho watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitchedthe word for her father’s name (on earth as in heaven)across her back that words aren’t made of flesh and blood,that they don’t bite the skin. Language is the animalwe’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It’s whywhen the boy hears his father yelling at the doorhe sends the dog that he’s kept hungry, that he’s kicked,then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every wordhas a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts.

~ Todd Davis

Well then, take this thought with you for the dark hours to come: It is a ludicrous fiction that love conquers all, but it can, in fact, conquer quite a lot. I am Iason of the Blood, Knight of Arthur, King of the Britons, reborn into dark service in the year of Our Lord five hundred and sixty. My power is vast, and for none to arrogate but by my will and decree. My services are engaged, Selina. Tell me what you need to ease your pain in this, and it is yours.

~ Chris Dee

fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus

There is a force that drives everything in this universe;you may call it anything you like, names that fit in tongue;when you're close to it, you have the power to do anything.

~ Toba Beta

How much power is there in a thousand noisy engines? I tell you, there is more power in a single blade of grass.

~ John Kremer

It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.

~ George Soros

Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code -- a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people--or, rather, there aren't any right people.

~ B.f. Skinner

My main concern is with the world order

~ George Soros

We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires

~ Alfred De Vigny

In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be.

~ Jean Baker Miller

I know that you are a mere flea! I know that you need only be squashed to be done away with! I know that I have fought this same battle a thousand thousand times before...but, perhaps this time I can crush you like the insect you are!

~ Marv Wolfman

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way-- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

~ B.f. Skinner

I had never met a lord before, nor had I ever expected to meet one. It didn't matter what he looked like: he was a lord first, and a human being, with a face and limbs and body, long, long after.

~ L.p. Hartley

In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.

~ Susan Quinn

The main obstacle to further progress on the resource curse is China, and to a lesser extent India.

~ George Soros

As I like to put it, we have hit pay dirt. The effort to cure the resource curse is a good example of what private foundations working with NGOs can accomplish.

~ George Soros

Power,' as the sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda writes, 'enters the picture in two ways': the first entails constructing and legitimizing the moral system itself; the second, in enforcing it. In this view, 'deviants are those who simply do not have enough power to prevent others from defining them as such'.

~ Shuli Barzilai

She'll be apples

~ April Lurie

He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.

~ Graham Greene

The source of desire to be driven by power and spread of influence makes its owner dangerous to its privileges, as it not only transforms the people who are beholden to its master, but as well creates fearful dictators and oligarchs.

~ Sirio Berati

So long as I perceive the world as hostile, I remain linked to it: *I am not crazy*. But sometimes, once my bad temper is exhausted, I have no language left at all: the world is not unreal (I could then utter it: there are arts of the unreal, among them the greatest arts of all), but disreal: reality has fled from it, is nowhere, so that I no longer have any meaning (any paradigm) available to me; *I do not manage* to define my relations with Coluche, the restaurant, the painter, the Piazza del Popolo. What relation can I have with a system of power if I am neither its slave nor its accomplice nor its witness. —from_A Lover's Discourse: Fragments_

~ Roland Barthes

Magick is not a supernatural power granted by spirits or demons. True magick is a natural power which exists in every person, and we have neglected it because of misguided principles.

~ Charbel Tadros

Kindnessis never weaknessif it has potentialto cause death.So, if you can“kill them with kindness,”the ball is in your court.YOU have the power!

~ Melody Lee

You can be the most powerful witch in the land, but you will always have a weakness, and that will always make you believe you have no power when someone exploits it. There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.

~ Rin Chupeco

Words got the power to hurt or heal.

~ L M Bryski

The world has achieved the most of so far, now it is after losing everything in this race of power.

~ Mahrukh

Nostalgia, she knew, has the power to make you smile and also to make you cry.

~ Swati Kumar

The reason you’re going through what you’re going through is to receive the things you’ve been praying for.

~ Jeanette Coron

It's clear that equality doesn't quite cut it. Asking for a sliver of disproportionate power is too polite a request. I don't want to be included. Instead, I want to question who created the standard in the first place.

~ Reni Eddo-Lodge