POWER QUOTES VI

quotations about power

He who has great desire should have great power; if not, woe be to him.

WILLIAM OF POITIERS

attributed, Day's Collacon


Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.

HAROLD MACMILLAN

attributed, The New Anatomy of Britain

Tags: Harold MacMillan


Power tires only those who do not have it.

GIULIO ANDREOTTI

London Independent, April 5, 1992

Tags: Giulio Andreotti


All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

WOODROW WILSON

letter to Mary A. Hulbert, September 21, 1913

Tags: Woodrow Wilson


The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Lathe of Heaven

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


What elements of power we wield! Truth unmixed with error, flashing as God's own lightning in its brightness, resistless if properly wielded, as that living flame!

T. M. EDDY

attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers


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

Tags: Lord Acton


The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

JAMES MADISON

attributed, The Great Quotations

Tags: James Madison


The supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character.

JAMES FRAZER

The Golden Bough


If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.

TOM STOPPARD

Squaring the Circle

Tags: Tom Stoppard


Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Queen Mab

Tags: Percy Bysshe Shelley


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

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

letter to John Adams, May 7, 1776

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Power is ever stealing from the many to the few; the manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.

WENDELL PHILLIPS

Lectures and Speeches

Tags: Wendell Phillips


People at the top do not want to share their power. They've always got some marvellous reason: I'm following my religion; I'm following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I'm representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don't cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn't be pessimistic about it.

TONY BENN

interview, "Hope is the Key", Share International, January 2003

Tags: Tony Benn


I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

attributed, The Dance of Life

Tags: Napoleon Bonaparte


We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

"John Hancock Otis", Spoon River Anthology


Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.

ALEXANDER LOWEN

Narcissism: Denial of the True Self

Tags: Alexander Lowen