Power Quotes
I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?Ronnie Shakes
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.Benjamin Disraeli
Men in Great Place are thrice Servants Servants of the Sovereign or State Servants of Fame and Servants of Business It is strange desire to seek Power and to lose Liberty.Francis Bacon
Three things ruin a man power, money, and women. I never wanted power. I never had any money, and the only woman in my life is up at the house right now.Harry S Truman
Better to rely on one powerful king than on many little princes.Jean de La Fontaine
You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.Giovanni Boccaccio, Leitch, Vincent B. ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001.
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.John Adams, Journal, 1772
The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.Sir B. Brodie
Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.Thomas Hobbes
The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest. And here is the need of religion and its power, to bring in the principle of benevolence and love to men.John Randolph
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.George Orwell, 1984
Men who accomplish great things in the industrial world are the ones who have faith in the money producing power of ideas.Charles Fillmore
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.Robert Frost
A King as such is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.William Hazlitt, on the Pleasure of Hating
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.Marcus Aelius Aurelius
Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.Lincoln Steffens
The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.Jon Wynne Tyson
Creative powers can just as easily turn out to be destructive. It rests solely with the moral personality whether they apply themselves to good things or to bad. And if this is lacking, no teacher can supply it or take its place.Carl Jung
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.Edmund Burke
No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorize and make cowards of men as the liquor power. Satan could not have fallen on a more potent instrument with which to thrall the world. Alcohol is king.Eliza Mother Stewart
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.Honore de Balzac
Power never takes a back step - Only in the face of more power.Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of an endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.Robyn Davidson
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.Lord Acton
The power to bring me out of solitude - Or to push me back into it - Had never belonged to another person. It was mine and only mine.Martha Beck, O Magazine, February 2003
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.Thomas Jefferson
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.Thomas Paine, "Age of Reason".
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.Katharine Graham
This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.Agathon, from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten much as we can easily destroy our puny selves.Stephen Jay Gould
Numbers are essential, but not absolutely essential to strength. For many churches are numerically strong but lamentably weak spiritually. Numbers, then, are no display of spiritual power or strength.W. T. Ussery
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5 (Television Series)
In men of the highest character and noblest genius there is to be found an insatiable desire for honour, command, power, and glory.Cicero
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.William Hazlitt, on the Pleasure of Hating
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.Albert Einstein, Telegram, 24 May 1946
