quotations about power
Power tires only those who do not have it.
GIULIO ANDREOTTI
London Independent, April 5, 1992
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
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
He who has great desire should have great power; if not, woe be to him.
WILLIAM OF POITIERS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
ANONYMOUS
For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.
NOAM CHOMSKY
Imperial Ambitions
Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
"John Hancock Otis", Spoon River Anthology
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.
VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE
"The Economic Tendency of Freethought"
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
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
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
Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.
MAHATMA GANDHI
The Indian States' Problem
Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.
EURIPIDES
The Bacchæ
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.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
The History of Sexuality
Power deludes the ones who wield it.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Power -- the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of nations -- was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge, yet as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you. Finally, when common sense said you were at its very center, it still seemed just as far away, only by this time it was on all sides, obscuring any vision of the world beyond it.... Was this phenomenon ... the reason why such men, who were truly concerned with the workings of power, chose to stay away from its center, so that they might never lose sight of power's contours?
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Neverÿon
Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
HAROLD MACMILLAN
attributed, The New Anatomy of Britain
Words frequently surrender power to the opposer.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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