Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Words frequently surrender power to the opposer.
True power comes when others offer it to you and you merely accept it as a gift, not as the spoils of some personal war.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Narcissus in Chains
Absolute power was not meant for man.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
JOHN ADAMS, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law
God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
He who always plays for power will often stand on the neck of one person to reach his arms around the neck of another.
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
CHINUA ACHEBE, Anthills of the Savannah
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
Power needs ideas and legitimation the way a conventional bank needs investment policies and the confidence of its depositors. Rulers are always few in number and could never obtain compliance if each command were purely random and had to be backed by force sufficient to compel obedience. Likewise, banks rely on the confidence of their depositors, which allows them to retain only a small fraction of their assets in liquid funds in order to meet the expected rate of withdrawal by depositors. All is well as long as depositors believe that the bank will cash their checks on demand, and part of that trust depends on a vague knowledge about the bank's adherence to certain accepted business standards. In the nation-state, all is well as long as citizens believe that the government knows what it is about, has the ability to deliver on some of its promises, and has sufficient force to back up its commands when necessary.... Legitimation achieves what power alone cannot, for it establishes the belief in the rightness of rule which, as long as it endures, precludes massive challenges.
REINHARD BENDIX, Kings or People
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
Nothing unmasks a man like his use of power.
ELBERT HUBBARD, The American Bible
Power should answer by action, not by speech.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.
JOHN ADAMS, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 13, 1815
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
The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1825
Power should act and not talk.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
He who looks for great power searches for perils.
What kind of power was it if it would never be used?
CHINUA ACHEBE, Arrow of God
If any man is rich and powerful, he comes under that law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
JOHN ADAMS, Novanglus Essays, No. 3
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON, attributed, The Great Quotations
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful, is that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Wealth was the short beer of existence. Power was champagne.
STEPHEN KING, Under the Dome
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Mr. Leiper, Jun. 12, 1815
Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
In all supremacy of power, there is inherent a prerogative to pardon.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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