quotations about power
Give me power but for a single day, and it is mine forever.
SEMIRAMIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
Him I would call the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Diogenes and Plato", Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
HAROLD MACMILLAN
attributed, The New Anatomy of Britain
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
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mr. Leiper, June 12, 1815
Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.
TOBIAS WOLFF
This Boy's Life
To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Words frequently surrender power to the opposer.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Power is superior to mere literature.
GREGORY I
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A Wizard of Earthsea
God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The spell of power never quite releases its hold.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Second Foundation
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.
MICHAEL ENDE
The Neverending Story
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
HENRY KISSINGER
And I Quote
Power unsubjected to the control of virtue is a poor guardian of civil liberty.
J. P. ZENGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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.
MARTIN BUBER
Between Man and Man