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
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Power: A New Social Analysis
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
Where there is power, there is resistance.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
The History of Sexuality
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
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.
ROSEANNE BARR
attributed, Women Know Everything!
Wealth was the short beer of existence. Power was champagne.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
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possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself.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
No one man should have all that power.
KANYE O. WEST
"Power"
Men in power are always interested in greater power.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
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
That's what we all want, isn't it? Power without price.
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
The Summoning
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
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
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
Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint.
SIR J. STEPHEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
TOM STOPPARD
Squaring the Circle
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
Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
You have seen power in its various forms--a benign deity, when exercised in the suppression of fraud, injustice, and tyranny, but a demon, when united with unbounded ambition--a wide-wasting fury, who has destroyed her thousands. Not an age of the world but has produced characters, to which whole human hecatombs have been sacrificed.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, December 26, 1783