Power

"Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power."

"Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none."

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

"Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak."

"Do you think maybe I want power for myself? That’s for fools who want to command other fools."

"Power wears out those who don't have it."

"The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of national groups or of individuals."

"Knowledge is power."

"He hath no power that hath not power to use."

"Sure, it’s abuse of power. What’s the point in power if you can’t abuse it?"

"Contesting power [...] is inevitable in the pursuit of justice and dignity for the marginalised and excluded."

"There are clear and predictable consequences for the world if human beings continue to rape the earth and plunder its resources; to exploit, oppress, and dominate the weak and the poor for the sake of greed and the hunger for power; to depend on ever-rising levels of violence and ever more lethal instruments of death and destruction in order to secure positions of power and privilege."

"I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have—POWER."

"Colin felt a shiver pass down his spine. What man, granted total power, could refrain from using it? And would not his first target inevitably be his fellow men?"

"Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No And pressing forward honor reality.We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully."

"Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power. … The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit."

"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."

"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."

"Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power."

"That was the real price, I thought. Once you had power, you ended up having to depend on it. Eventually, like anything else, it owned you. Eventually? No, from the beginning; we just don’t bother admitting it at first."

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

"Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power."

"At a certain point power becomes very frightening, and to really begin to reconstruct civilization means to really act in a powerful way. And power is the thing that women have been taught is a real taboo."

"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them."

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

"A right, in the abstract, is a fact; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never."

"Who is all-powerful should fear everything."

"Power expands through the distribution of secrecy."

"Nearest the king, nearest the gallows."

"What real power can buy, of course, is anonymity."

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery."

"I took my power in my hand And went against the world; ’T was not so much as David had, But I was twice as bold."

"It was clear to all there gathered that power is a dreadful thing, and that knowledge of power dims the seeing of the wise."

"I admit the desire. But do not tempt me. Power has a way of revenging itself upon its usurpers."

"Power is power. Its uses are in the hands of the user."

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

"We have, in truth, resorted to power [in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam] because our politics has failed. Since no politician can afford to admit this, we must pretend that we are resorting to power in order to make our politics succeed."

"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! O what agencies! The Holy Ghost standing and pleading with us to so work that He may help us, the very earth coming to the help of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet I am painfully impressed that we are not wielding the elements of Christian achievement nearly up to their maximum."

"That was the way of the world: power would always be used, nation would subjugate nation, the weak would always be slaughtered. Everything else was pious self-delusion."

"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."

"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force."

""Power to the people" does not mean a government or political party to rule in their name, but social and political power in the hands of the people themselves."

"Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle."

"Then, everlasting Love, restrain thy will; 'Tis god-like to have power, but not to kill."

"One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."

"Domination is not that solid and global kind of domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society."

"One should try to locate power at the extreme of its exercise, where it is always less legal in character."

"The analysis [of power] should not attempt to consider power from its internal point of view and...should refrain from posing the labyrinthine and unanswerable question: 'Who then has power and what has he in mind? What is the aim of someone who possesses power?' Instead, it is a case of studying power at the point where its intention, if it has one, is completely invested in its real and effective practices."

"Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc....we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects."

"Power is everywhere ... because it comes from everywhere."

"Let us turn our backs on power."

"Socialism seeks to change society for the sake of the oppressed masses, but is what it would accomplish truly for their welfare? Socialism would create a social upheaval “for the masses,” and the masses would stake their lives in the struggle together with those who had risen up on their behalf. But what would the ensuing change mean for them? Power would be in the hands of the leaders, and the order of the new society would be based on that power. The masses would become slaves allover again to that power. What is revolution, then, but the replacing of one power with another?"

"We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding... It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war."

"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."

"The destiny was fulfilled which the father of the gods, Enlil of the mountain, had decreed for Gilgamesh: "In nether-earth the darkness will show him a light: of mankind, all that are known, none will leave a monument for generations to come to compare with his. The heroes, the wise men, like the new moon have their waxing and waning. Men will say, 'Who has ever ruled with might and with power like him?' As in the dark month, the month of shadows, so without him there is no light. O Gilgamesh, this was the meaning of your dream. You were given the kingship, such was your destiny, everlasting life was not your destiny. Because of this do not be sad at heart, do not be grieved or oppressed; he has given you power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness and the light of mankind. He has given unexampled supremacy over the people, victory in battle from which no fugitive returns, in forays and assaults from which there is no going back. But do not abuse this power, deal justly with your servants in the palace, deal justly before the face of the Sun."

"Could this have just happened? . . . I can’t believe that ... Some Power put all this into orbit and keeps it there."

"The problem with power is that people pay attention to it, and it's very easy to get beside yourself and use it in the wrong way."

"Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? The founders of political science did not think so. "I put for a general inclination of mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death," declared Thomas Hobbes. Because of this innate lust for power, Hobbes thought that life before (or after) the state was a "war of every man against every man"—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Was Hobbes right? Do humans have an unquenchable desire for power that, in the absence of a strong ruler, inevitably leads to a war of all against all? To judge from surviving examples of bands and villages, for the greater part of prehistory our kind got along quite well without so much as a paramount chief, let alone the all-powerful English leviathan King and Mortal God, whom Hobbes believed was needed for maintaining law and order among his fractious countrymen."

"More power than any good man should want, and more power than any other kind of man ought to have."

"When a man in power asks for time to consider anything, it is generally in order that he may be able to consult his immediate inferior, without whose sanction he dares not assent to anything."

"[P]eople do enjoy power. ... How do people behave behind the wheel of a motorcar? — which is the most power that most people get in their lives. It transforms probably seventy percent of drivers into slavering maniacs — shouting and hooting."

"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."

"There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutions—to cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."

"The best education will not immunize a person against corruption by power. The best education does not automatically make people compassionate. We know this more clearly than any preceding generation. Our time has seen the best-educated society, situated in the heart of the most civilized part of the world, give birth to the most murderously vengeful government in history. Forty years ago the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that."

"Any established power system grows decadent over time, if there is nothing with the strength or motivation to challenge it, and if it refuses to challenge itself."

"we have to invent new images and ways of power. So far the world thinks of power as violence, that power comes from a gun. We must create a new kind of drama in which there is drama, but it's nonviolent. And this has barely been thought of."

"Das Wissen, das Macht ist, kennt keine Schranken, weder in der Versklavung der Kreatur noch in der Willfähigkeit gegen die Herren der Welt."

"Die Herrschaft tritt dem Einzelnen als das Allgemeine gegenüber, als die Vernunft in der Wirklichkeit."

"Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never used it except on the side of mercy."

"History does not relate any true revolution which came from power. All began with education and meant in essence a moral summons."

"I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be."

"Also, there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth anguish of nations not knowing the way out because of the roaring of the sea and its agitation. People will become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

"Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”"

"προσεκύνησαν τῷ θηρίῳ λέγοντες Τίς ὅμοιος τῷ θηρίῳ, καὶ τίς δύναται πολεμῆσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ;"

"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."

"It used to be said that information is power. As Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the board of the New York Times Co., rightly says, "Information is now ubiquitous. Power is understanding.""

"One of the greatest powers in the world is the ability to define reality and cause others to accept it. This power is even increased although negatively when one can define reality and make others accept it even when it is to their disadvantage."

"The power hungry always made the same mistake—they built their True Case, the case they were willing to defend in public, upon false logic."

"The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation."

"The possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility."

"Great power is almost always a great evil."

"Power is a debt to the people"

"Him I would call the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind."

"He would rather rule with a cloud over his head than not rule at all."

"It was an old story, and a familiar one. Those who sought freedom were tempted by power instead, and became indistinguishable from those they sought to overthrow."

"A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he may also exercise power over him by shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?"

"[P]ower, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

"The intoxication with power is worse than drunkenness with liquor and such, for he who is drunk with power does not come to his senses before he falls."

"Man is insatiable for power; he is infinite in his desires, and, always discontented with what he has, he loves only what he has not. People complain about the despotism of princes; they should complain about that of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch of Asia to the child who smothers a bird with his hand for the pleasure of seeing something in the world weaker than himself."

"There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation."

"Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less." "So power is a mummer's trick?" "A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

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

"Superman: Batman won't quit so long as he can draw breath. None of my teammates will. Me? I've got a different problem. I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can't you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose, and show you just how powerful I really am."

"If you want to discover just what there is in a man — give him power."

"Freedom, particularly social freedom, is indeed utterly antithetical to a state, even a representative one. At the most basic level, representation "asks" that we give our freedom away to another; it assumes, in essence, that some should have power and many others shouldn't. Without power, equally distributed to all, we renounce our very capacity to join with everyone else in meaningfully shaping our society. We renounce our ability to self-determine, and thus our liberty. And so, no matter how enlightened leaders may be, they are governing as tyrants nonetheless, since we—"the people"—are servile to their decisions. This is not to say that representative government is comparable with more authoritarian forms of rule. A representative system that fails in its promise of, say, universal human rights is clearly preferable to a government that makes no such pretensions at all. Yet even the kindest of representative systems necessarily entails a loss of liberty. Like capitalism, a grow-or-die imperative is built into the state's very structure. [...] Whatever a state does, then, has to be in its own interests. Sometimes, of course, the state's interests coincide with those of various groups or people; they may even overlap with concepts such as justice or compassion. But these convergences are in no way central or even essential to its smooth functioning. They are merely instrumental stepping-stones as the state continually moves to maintain, solidify, and consolidate its power. Because, like it or not, all states are forced to strive for a monopoly on power. [...] In this quest to monopolize power, there will always have to be dominated subjects. As institutionalized systems of domination, then, neither state nor capital are controllable. Nor can they be mended or made benign."

"All states are forced to strive for a monopoly on power."

"Power needs to be forever linked to freedom; freedom needs to be the limit placed on power."

"If freedom is the social aim, power must be held horizontally. We must all be both rulers and ruled simultaneously, or a system of rulers and subjects is the only alternative. We must all hold power equally in our hands if freedom is to coexist with power. Freedom, in other words, can only be maintained through a sharing of political power, and this sharing happens through political institutions. Rather than being made a monopoly, power should be distributed to us all, thereby allowing all our varied "powers" (of reason, persuasion, decision making, and so on) to blossom. This is the power to create rather than dominate."

"Without his rod revers'd, And backward mutters of dissevering power."

"There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power — assuming that life itself is the will to power."

"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

"When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines."

"Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U.S. government policy. ... Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power."

"Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power."

"All who are at all familiar with history know that men will abuse power when they possess it."

"Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two. When people exert power over others, they compel them, forcefully. They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values. When people wield authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence—a competence that is spontaneously recognized and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that justice is being served. […]"

"“It is not so much the girls’ sexuality per se…but the fact that they have sex with other boys”. Sex is considered to be a masculine trait because it is a form of power over someone, and if a woman tries to take control of this power she will instantly be punished for trying. Her sexual freedom is not within gender-norms and the patriarchal society does not accept it. Only “male domination is natural and follows inevitable from evolutionary…or social pressures”."

"No matter what kind of promises a man who’s looking for power makes, he’s not going to turn out to be any different from the one he replaces."

"The first duty of power is to perpetuate itself. The first duty of free men is to resist it."

"The second you attain power, you become what you’ve been fighting against."

"Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one’s interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which one people respect the interests of another, and eventually the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment."

"To the essence of power as a specifically human phenomenon belongs its ability to give purpose to things. Power awaits direction. Unlike the forces of nature, it becomes part of a cause_and-effect relationship, not through necessity, but only through the intervention of an agent. Power receives its character only when someone becomes aware of it, determines its use, and puts it to work. This means that someone must answer for it."

"Modern cities everywhere are alike, whether in Western Europe, China, North or South America, or Russia. A type of man is evolving who lives only in the present, who is "replaceable" to a terrifying degree, and who all too easily falls victim to power. The modern state shares the characteristics just described. It too is losing its organic structure, becoming more and more a complex of all-controlling functions. In it the human being steps back, the apparatus forward."

"In proportion to power is responsibility."

"Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power."

"The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics."

"The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique."

"The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical with the larger interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave-owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just economic system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization."

"Over mortals all desire to reign, Not understanding that God himself hates The lust of rule, and most of all things hates Insatiate kings fearful in wickedness, And over them he stirs up what is dark"

"Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton."

". . . How stern And desolate a tract is this wide world! How withered all the buds of natural good! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power!"

"it’s mysterious how these power structures unfold, isn’t it, and how we’re willing to accept them and allow them to prevail without questioning them."

"Perhaps it was as Ed said, that arbitrary power corrupts arbitrarily."

"God is not simply power, as most people were inclined to think. God is love, and he manifests himself in the dialectics of an impotent love. ... The emperor is not God. Jesus desacralizes that kind of power and its claim to be the absolute mediation of God. The pax romana is not the kingdom of God. The political organization of Rome might dazzle the world with its power, but it was oppressive; hence there was nothing sacred or divine about it. ... In Jesus' eyes God's ultimate historical word is love, whereas the ultimate historical word of power in the human world is oppression. Jesus' journey to the cross is a trial dealing with the authentic nature of power."

"We are defined by how we use our power."

"The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power."

"Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us. We are socialists. Let us hope that it will not have been in vain."

"Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police & military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. ... Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed."

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

"Power. That's what this is about? Yes? Power and the forces that are manipulated by the powerful men and bureaucracies trying to maintain control and possession of that power? Power perpetrates war and oppression to maintain itself until it finally topples over with the bureaucratic weight of itself and sinks into the pages of history (except in Texas), leaving lessons that need to be learned unlearned. Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"Suspectum semper invisumque dominantibus qui proximus destinaretur."

"Imperium flagitio acquisitum nemo unquam bonis artibus exercuit."

"Imperium cupientibus nihil medium inter summa et præcipitia."

"Potentiam cautis quam acribus consiliis tutius haberi."

"Cupido dominandi cunctis affectibus flagrantior est."

"“You think staying in power is why they do it?” “That’s usually the reason for arbitrary cruelty.”"

"To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world, his crowning achievement, which would place him beside his Creator, make him fulfill his Ultimate Destiny."

"I have found that power does not corrupt. People who seek power are already corrupted."

"The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence. In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we examine it very closely, it will be perceived that religion itself holds sway there much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion."

"All power corrupts, absolute power is even more fun."

"My story Lord of the Rings is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination). Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false."

"Real power is--I don't even want to use the word--fear."

"Though he hadn't wanted to attend NYMA, certain things made sense for Donald there, just as ROTC had for Freddy. There was structure, and there were consequences to his actions. There was a logical system of punishment and reward. At the same time, though, life at NYMA reinforced one of Fred's lessons: the person with the power (no matter how arbitrarily that power was conferred or attained) got to decide what was right and wrong. Anything that helped you maintain power was by definition right, even if it wasn't always fair. NYMA also reinforced Donald's aversion to vulnerability, which is essential for tapping into love and creativity because it can also expose us to shame, something he could not tolerate. By necessity he had to improve his impulse control, not only to avoid punishment but to help him get away with transgressions that required a little more finesse."

"There is a remedy against the domination imposed, not by generals, statesmen, and men of action, whose power dissolves when they retire, but by the great sort-crossers, whose power increases when they die- the remedy of becoming aware of metaphor..."

"Remember, I have not appointed you as commanders and tyrants over the people. I have sent you as leaders instead, so that the people may follow your example. Give the Muslims their rights and do not beat them lest they become abused. Do not praise them unduly, lest they fall into the error of conceit. Do not keep your doors shut in their faces, lest the more powerful of them eat up the weaker ones. And do not behave as if you were superior to them, for that is tyranny over them."

"Power consists in making oneself the goal of another person's social instincts, without seeking to satisfy one's own social instincts through him. The other then does everything one asks. Powerlessness consists in wanting or having to satisfy one's social instincts through another person whose social instincts one has not succeeded in concentrating on oneself — one then does everything the other asks."

"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo."

"That, decided Elric, was the root of decadence—when power is enjoyed solely for its own sake."

"I promise you, there are people in America whose only problem with the Taliban is that they did it for the wrong god. Whether it's incest, rape, terrorism or Nazism, it's all the same thing—accumulating and abusing power."

"All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation."

"Every institution which grapples with the problem of molding recalcitrant material into a fairer shape—and nothing is more recalcitrant than the passions and interests of men—runs the risk of being defeated by its material. And since the institution which proposes the ideal is itself served by fallible human beings, the danger is not only that the experiment may fail but that the artists themselves, wrestling with such insidious substances as power, responsibility, and material goods, may themselves be caught by these powerful instincts, may appropriate to themselves the power they sought to tame or the riches they had hoped to divert to a nobler cause."

"Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. … If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial."

"An untoward event. (Threatening to disturb the balance of power.)"

"My cool judgement is, that if all the other doctrines of devils which have been committed to writing since letters were in the world were collected together in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that, should a Prince form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that man."

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

"Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival."

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

"Better were the prospects of a people under the influence of the worst government who should hold the power of changing it, than those of a people under the best who should hold no such power."

"Power never takes a back step — only in the face of more power."

"Every Communist must grasp the truth: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.""

"Michael Corleone: My father's no different than any other powerful man – any man who's responsible for other people, like a senator or a president."

"Give me a lever long enough And a prop strong enough, I can single handed move the world."

"Odin, thou whirlwind, what a threat is this Thou threatenest what transcends thy might, even thine, For of all powers the mightiest far art thou, Lord over men on earth, and Gods in Heaven; Yet even from thee thyself hath been withheld One thing — to undo what thou thyself hast ruled."

"Iron hand in a velvet glove."

"To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary."

"Qui peut ce qui lui plaît, commande alors qu'il prie."

"So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed, And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!"

"For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?"

"Du bist noch nicht der Mann den Teufel festzuhalten."

"Patience and Gentleness is Power."

"O what is it proud slime will not believe Of his own worth, to hear it equal praised Thus with the gods?"

"Nihil est quod credere de se Non possit, quum laudatur dis æqua potestas."

"Et qui nolunt occidere quemquam Posse volunt."

"Ut desint vires tamen est laudanda voluntas."

"A cane non magno sæpe tenetur aper."

"Nunquam est fidelis cum potente societas."

"Unlimited power corrupts the possessor."

"And deal damnation round the land."

"The powers that be are ordained of God."

"Kann ich Armeen aus der Erde stampfen? Wächst mir ein Kornfeld in der flachen Hand?"

"Ich fühle eine Armee in meiner Faust."

"Quod non potest vult posse, qui nimium potest."

"Minimum decet libere cui multum licet."

"No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, But the whole boundless continent is yours."

"The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us."

"Male imperando summum imperium amittitur."

"I thought that my invincible power would hold the world captive, leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip."

"He never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power."

"Et errat longe, mea quidem sententia, Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius, Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitia adjungitur."

"A power is passing from the earth."

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

"There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

"In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support [salary] is a power over his will."

"From this we learn that a wise prince sees to it that never, in order to attack someone, does he become the ally of a prince more powerful than himself, except when necessity forces him, as I said above. If you win, you are the powerful king's prisoner, and wise princes avoid as much as they can being in other men's power."

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

"The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferr'd and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remaines fundamentally, and cannot be tak'n from them, without a violation of thir natural birthright."

"For we put the power in the people."

"They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a people's Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people."

"When I resist, therefore, when I as a Democrat resist the concentration of power, I am resisting the processes of death, because the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human initiative, and, therefore of human energy."

"Valta menee päähän. (Askola, Uusimaa) (KRA)"