Power Quotes

He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.

~ Craig Ferguson

When men in power decide that things need to be rebalanced at any cost, the violence is never brief and never really directed solely at the imbalance that supposedly inspired it. The rule of law becomes the rule of violence. Revenge becomes a synonym for justice. No city is safe from such horror, no nation, no time in all of history. Be ready to recognize the moment. Be always ready.

~ Dean Koontz

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape.

~ Susan Griffin

Where a person has no control, he will turn to violence; either to attain control, or as an alternative to it.

~ Charlie Herrick

Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.

~ Rudolf Rocker

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: I feed on your energy.

~ Frank Herbert

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

~ David Mitchell

...don't you realize a flawless profile means nothing when a mere smile drives me to desperation? Don't you covet that power?..

~ John Geddes

He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.

~ Émile Zola

The key ingredient in engaging the power available from service is motive.

~ Richie Norton

Best not to take, yet doubt its strength,A leash with Demons at its length.

~ Mckenzie Bodkin

This is the power of a kiss: It does not have the power to kill you. But it has the power to bring you to life.

~ David Levithan

Assuming is a form of giving away your power to another regarding an outcome that concerns you.

~ Molly Friedenfeld

...It is necessary for the average citizen, if he wishes to make a living, to avoid incurring the hostility of certain big men. And these big men have an outlook - religious, moral, and political - with which they expect their employees to agree, at least outwardly.

~ Bertrand Russell

Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice.

~ Kate Horsley

With great power comes a great need to take a nap.

~ Rick Riordan

There are two different kinds of people in the world. There are people who instinctively look for every chance to be a “victim” and those who look for every chance to rise above—regardless of where they are in life and what’s happening around them. There are people who realize their ability to create (greatly influence) reality toward a positive direction for themselves and those around them, and unfortunately those who use this power we all have for destructive purposes for themselves and others—many times without even knowing what they’re doing or the power they have inside themselves. We are all powerful individuals. Let’s use that power to create something beautiful!

~ Christopher Hawke

Taking what is, then making it into what it can be through the power of creation that we all possess.

~ Steven Redhead

What power has law where only money rules?

~ Petronius Arbiter

[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.

~ Michel Foucault

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn’t call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn’t think you could.

~ Dorothy B. Hughes

Another misconception is that desires are insatiable. Admittedly, for the small segment of society that is clinically deranged, this statement may not hold true. But for those seeking riches, pleasure, or power, too much of a good thing dulls the appetite.” – Jeremy Lyons [Survival of the Fittest]

~ Marvin H. Mcintyre

It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not. …

~ Carl Sagan

... privilege was obligation; command was service; power, the gift itself, entailed a heavy loss of freedom.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer master, but an animal among animals; under the Martian heel.

~ H.g. Wells

God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.

~ Anne Brontë

In such a beast as this... (he means the army)...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.

~ Paul Hoffman

Never limit yourself to what you can't do, but to what you have the power to do with what you have.

~ Nadège Richards

Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.

~ Seneca

People with power listen less carefully, and have difficulty taking into account what others already know.

~ Dean M. Schroeder

Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies.

~ Roman Payne

An idea can destroy the mind of a human being, twist it into a dark path of destruction and illness. But only the human can destroy the mind with a bullet to the soul. Ideas do not kill people; they ruin them. People kill people.

~ Ingrid

Dreams dress us carefully in the colors of power and faith.

~ Aberjhani

I had no idea what humans were capable of. I heard they were crafty, but how are they able to do such things?You mean harness light and water? Speedy asked. Change the weather?Yes.It's only the beginning, Speedy said. There are more marvels waiting. Some not so marvelous.Such as?Be not in haste, said the tortoise.There is nothing here but time.If you live long enough, you will see.Of course, though, you will see them from your cage.Live long enough? I asked. Are there mortal dangers here?The tortoise chuckled. The boy doesn't always take very good care of his prisoners, Rex the lizard chimed in.What do you mean? He doesn't feed us enough?Sometimes he doesn't understand what we need to survive, Rex answered. Sometimes he plays too rough.How can a creature able to bend the laws of nature be so cruel? I asked.

~ Patrick Jennings

Men with power had the responsibility to know what was best, and they so rarely did.

~ Beck Sherman

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.

~ Irvine Welsh

Fear will paralyze you and prohibit growth

~ Michelle Cook-Hall

Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.

~ John Gardner