POWER QUOTES V

quotations about power

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Imperial Ambitions

Tags: Noam Chomsky


The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.

ANONYMOUS

Tags: Anonymous quotes


One of the tremendous evils of the world is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands. Half a dozen men may, at this moment, light the fires of war through the world, may convulse all civilized nations, sweep earth and sea with armed hosts, spread desolation through the fields and bankruptcy through cities, and make themselves felt by some form of suffering through every household in Christendom.

WILLIAM E. CHANNING

Thoughts

Tags: William E. Channing


The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

What Desires Are Politically Important?

Tags: Bertrand Russell


But whatever gives power is also potentially dangerous. What can make others anxious is a potentially destructive power; and if it can harm others it might also destroy its owner.

BRUNO BETTELHEIM

Symbolic Wounds

Tags: Bruno Bettelheim


power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

The History of Sexuality

Tags: Michel Foucault


Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de trés bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.

JOHN ADAMS

letter to Thomas Jefferson, February 2, 1816

Tags: John Adams


The natural destiny of power is fragmentation.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Corrino

Tags: Brian Herbert


To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.

EURIPIDES

The Bacchæ

Tags: Euripides


Him I would call the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

"Diogenes and Plato", Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


Power is just using energy in a wise way to get things done. Power has been misinterpreted to mean getting my way on the backs of other people. Getting whatever I want, forgetting that there are other beings and species and energies involved.

ELIZABETH LESSER

"What's Possible: An Interview With Elizabeth Lesser", Omega, May 8, 2012

Tags: Elizabeth Lesser


Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

What Desires Are Politically Important?

Tags: Bertrand Russell


Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE

"The Economic Tendency of Freethought"


Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

LORD BYRON

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Tags: Lord Byron


The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Human Nature and the Social Order

Tags: Charles Horton Cooley


Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.

HAROLD MACMILLAN

attributed, The New Anatomy of Britain

Tags: Harold MacMillan


Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

TOBIAS WOLFF

This Boy's Life

Tags: Tobias Wolff


All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert