POWER QUOTES IV
quotations about power
Men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Great Place", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political
You gain power by pretending to be weak.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
No one man should have all that power.
KANYE O. WEST
"Power"
That's what we all want, isn't it? Power without price.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
The Summoning
So long as a man's power, that is, his capacity to realize what he has in mind, is bound to the goal, to the work, to the calling, it is, considered in itself, neither good nor evil, it is only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself.
MARTIN BUBER
Wealth was the short beer of existence. Power was champagne.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
Power makes you a monarch, and all the fancy robes in the world won't do the job without it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Narcissus in Chains
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
Power revealed is power sacrificed.... The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO & CHUCK HOGAN
The Fall
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, November 13, 1815
Where there is power, there is resistance.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
The History of Sexuality
If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
TOM STOPPARD
Squaring the Circle
Extensive powers not exercised as far as was necessary have, I believe, scarcely ever failed to ruin the possessor.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to President Reed, July 4, 1780
Men in power are always interested in greater power.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
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 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
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.
ROSEANNE BARR
attributed, Women Know Everything!
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
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What Desires Are Politically Important?
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment