Power Quotes

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva
Hermann hesse - you know quite well, deep within you, that there...
I regret to say that we of the F. B. I. are powerless to act in cases of oral - Genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
J. Edgar Hoove
As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow - Citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
Tench Coxe
Kahlil gibran - nor shall derision prove powerful against those...
The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth the power and will to succeed.
Edwin Whipple
When I was young, I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness... I was right.
Gahan Wilson
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children. If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.
Clarence Darrow
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
Jacob Chanowski
There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
Booker T. Washington
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
Hellen Kelle
A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.
Fawn M. Brodie
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
Richard Bach, Illusions [1977]
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
Seneca
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Albert Einstein
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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
Love and respect woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority you have none.
Giuseppe Mazzini
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville
What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.
Edward Bulwer - Lytton
To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective.
Liz Smith
Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form.
Thomas Troward
The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself.
Blaine Lee
Man has responsibility, not power.
Tuscarora prove
Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.
Thucyclides
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for. success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Vaclav Havel
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Albert Einstein
Believe in yourself Have faith in your abilities Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Leo Buscaglia
Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - - This is of the essence of leadership.
Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960
Austin Powers Yeah, baby, yeah.
Austin Powers International Man of Mystery
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
William Hazlitt, on the Pleasure of Hating
Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Better to rely on one powerful king than on many little princes.
Jean de La Fontaine
Remember that the evil which is now in the world will only get more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love.
The Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Letter, 1917
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.
Mark Twain
No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.
J. Michael Straczynski
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
Immanuel Kant, CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Refrain from doing ill for one all powerful reason, lest our children should copy our misdeeds we are all to prone to imitate whatever is base and depraved.
Juvenal
Politics is the science of getting more power than anyone deserves to have.
Kirk Brothers, The Revolutionary Right