"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."

"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."

"Imperium flagitio acquisitum nemo unquam bonis artibus exercuit."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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"

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

"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."

"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."

". . . 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!"

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

"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."

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

"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."

"“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”."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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. […]"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Power is a debt to the people"

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