POWER QUOTES VIII

quotations about power

Nothing is more untrue than the famous saying of an ancient historian, that power is retained by the same arts by which it is acquired; untrue at least for men, though truer in the case of nations.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880

Tags: Lord Acton


All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

EDMUND BURKE

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Tags: Edmund Burke


Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

Waiting for the Barbarians

Tags: Lewis H. Lapham


Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?

URSULA K. LE GUIN

A Wizard of Earthsea

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


Power is superior to mere literature.

GREGORY I

attributed, Day's Collacon


The love of power is the demon of all men.

TONGAYI CHIRISA

"The Sin Eater", Sleepy Hollow


Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

RALPH ELLISON

Invisible Man


When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick. He overreaches himself, the work denies itself to him, the incarnation of the spirit no longer takes place, and to avoid the threat of senselessness he snatches after empty power. This sickness casts the genius on to the same level as those hysterical figures who, being by nature without power, slave for power, in order that they may enjoy the illusion that they are inwardly powerful, and who in this striving for power cannot let a pause intervene, since a pause would bring with it the possibility of self-reflection and self-reflection would bring collapse.

MARTIN BUBER

Between Man and Man

Tags: Martin Buber


I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.

DON DELILLO

Underworld

Tags: Don DeLillo


Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.

LIBBA BRAY

The Sweet Far Thing


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

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


With great power there must also come ... great responsibility!

STAN LEE

Amazing Fantasy #15, August 1962

Tags: Stan Lee


Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

HENRY KISSINGER

And I Quote

Tags: Henry Kissinger


Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall.

FRANK HERBERT

Dune Messiah

Tags: Frank Herbert


The spell of power never quite releases its hold.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Second Foundation

Tags: Isaac Asimov


When your power comes from others, on approval, you are their slave.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Old School

Tags: Tobias Wolff


Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

PAULO FREIRE

The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation


The depositary of power is always unpopular.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Coningsby

Tags: Benjamin Disraeli


By power ... I do not understand a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effects ... traverse the entire body social ... It seems to me that first what needs to be understood is the multiplicity of relations of force that are immanent to the domain wherein they are exercised, and that are constitutive of its organization; the game that through incessant struggle and confrontation transforms them, reinforces them, inverts them; the supports these relations of force find in each other, so as to form a chain or system, or, on the other hand, the gaps, the contradictions that isolate them from each other; in the end, the strategies in which they take effect, and whose general pattern or institutional crystallization is embodied in the mechanisms of the state, in the formulation of the law, in social hegemonies. The condition of possibility of power ... should not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique space of sovereignty whence would radiate derivative and descendent forms; it is the moving base of relations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable. Omnipresence of power: not at all because it regroups everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every instant, at every point, or moreover in every relation between one point and another. Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

History of Sexuality

Tags: Michel Foucault


One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert