quotations about power
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
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
What elements of power we wield! Truth unmixed with error, flashing as God's own lightning in its brightness, resistless if properly wielded, as that living flame!
T. M. EDDY
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Never doubt what small men will do for great power.
PAOLO BACIGALUPI
The Windup Girl
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 is ever stealing from the many to the few; the manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
Lectures and Speeches
He who has great desire should have great power; if not, woe be to him.
WILLIAM OF POITIERS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Narcissism: Denial of the True Self
The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Queen Mab
People at the top do not want to share their power. They've always got some marvellous reason: I'm following my religion; I'm following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I'm representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don't cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn't be pessimistic about it.
TONY BENN
interview, "Hope is the Key", Share International, January 2003
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
The supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful, is that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves.... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent.
SANAYA ROMAN
Living with Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation
Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
"John Hancock Otis", Spoon River Anthology
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
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia