POWER QUOTES III

quotations about power

Power quote

Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.

DEAN KOONTZ

Brother Odd

Tags: Dean Koontz


Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

NICHOLAS BLACK ELK

The Sacred Pipe

Tags: Nicholas Black Elk


The impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

ERIC HOFFER

The Ordeal of Change

Tags: Eric Hoffer


Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

"Self Reliance", Essays

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

CARL JUNG

The Psychology of the Unconscious

Tags: Carl Jung


O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!

JOHN DONNE

song

Tags: John Donne


Goodness and supreme power do not agree together.

LUCANUS

attributed, Day's Collacon


People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.

JOSS WHEDON

"Mom, He's Doing It Again", Whedonesque, November 10, 2007


Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Circular to the States, May 9, 1753

Tags: George Washington


Absolute power was not meant for man.

WILLIAM E. CHANNING

Thoughts

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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Honore de Balzac


Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who ... have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

J. K. ROWLING

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Tags: J. K. Rowling


Unlimited power should not be trusted in the hands of anyone who is not endued with a perfection more than human.

J. VEITCH

attributed, Day's Collacon


All human power is a compound of time and patience.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Eugénie Grandet

Tags: Honore de Balzac


Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


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

Tags: John Locke


Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.

IRVIN D. YALOM

Existential Psychotherapy

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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

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That power is in vain which is never in use.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote