Themes

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Power expands through the distribution of secrecy."

"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."

"Nearest the king, nearest the gallows."

"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."

"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possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself."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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Knowledge is 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."

"Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power."

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

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

"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."

"All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him."

"I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and The blind to hear him speak: matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers Upon him as he passed; the nobles bended, As to Jove's statue, and the commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts."

"Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought: it is only a virtue where men have it, whether they will or no. It is generally an appeal to the people from the sentence given by men of sense."

"Or art thou base, common and popular?"

"That’s the problem with being the flavor of the month: before you know it, the calendar’s turned, and no one can remember what they found so appealing about you in the first place."

"And to some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it."

"The ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet."

"Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!"

"Their poet, a sad trimmer, but no less In company a very pleasant fellow, Had been the favorite of full many a mess Of men, and made them speeches when half mellow; And though his meaning they could rarely guess, Yet still they deign'd to hiccup or to bellow The glorious meed of popular applause, Of which the first ne'er knows the second cause."

"Some shout him, and some hang upon his car, To gaze in his eyes, and bless him. Maidens wave Their 'kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy; While others, not so satisfied, unhorse The gilded equipage, and turning loose His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve."

"There is nothing which a prudent man must shun more carefully than living with a view to popularity and giving serious thought to the things esteemed by the multitude, instead of making sound reason his guide of life, so that, even if he must gainsay all men and fall into disrepute and incur danger for the sake of what is honourable, he will in no wise choose to swerve from what has been recognized as right."

"We have aimed at popularity in the best sense of that term. The truly popular writer never sinks into the vulgar crowd. He rather raises the masses by bringing the highest subjects within their comprehension, making them, without a show of erudition, easily understood."

"εἰ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου ἦτε, ὁ κόσμος ἂν τὸ ἴδιον ἐφίλει· ὅτι δὲ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου οὐκ ἐστέ, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ ἐξελεξάμην ὑμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου, διὰ τοῦτο μισεῖ ὑμᾶς ὁ κόσμος."