Power Quotes

All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.

The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.

You have the power to make the world a better place by being kind to someone today

Come, see the north-wind's masonry, Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion.

Every form of power comes down to language. In law, there's all kinds of words you don't know if you're not a lawyer and that gives them power. In business, it's the same thing.

Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.

The only thing over which you have complete right of control at all times is your mental attitude.

Until a man selects a DEFINITE PURPOSE IN LIFE, he dissipates his energies & spreads his thoughts over so many subjects & in so many different directions that they lead not to power, but to indecision & weakness.

Why be a governor or senator when you can be king of Disneyland?

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson - and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States - only on a far bigger and broader basis.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

I don't know who the great lawyers are, and I presume you can't get to them. I know of no case where it can be said for certain that they took part. They defend some people, but you can't get them to do that through your own efforts, they only defend the ones they want to defend. But I assume a case they take on must have progressed beyond the lower court. It's better not to think of them at all, otherwise you'll find the consultations with the other lawyers, their advice and their assistance, extremely disgusting and useless.

I may be a despicable person, but when Truth speaks through me I am invincible.

Be the chief but never the lord.

Look at the Chandra Levy case. It's become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

Napoleon is always right.

Now, infidel, I have you on the hip!

Why would I want to be president? I'm the king of Disneyland.

There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

The language of the street is always strong.

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.

Politicians are dumb, but they can count to 50% plus one.

History is written by the winners.

Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy.

Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.

It is the stillest words that bring the storm.

In war, men are nothing, one man is everything.

[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.

Creative power is mightier than its possessor.

In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.

Ahimsa must be placed before everything else while it is professed. Then alone it becomes irresistible.

When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long.

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.

The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed, by, as a loss of power.

There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.

We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations.

Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.

Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.

Life is a search after power.

If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of nonviolence.

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

Writing is a weapon and it’s more powerful than a fist could ever be.

What is powerful is when what you say is just the tip of the iceberg of what you know

The Master Speed No speed of wind or water rushing by but you have speed far greater. You can climb back up a stream of radiance to the sky, and back through history up the stream of time. And you were given this swiftness, not for haste nor chiefly that you may go where you will, but in the rush of everything to waste, that you may have the power of standing still-- off any still or moving thing you say. Two such as you with such a master speed From one another once you are agreed that life is only life forevermore together wing to wing and oar to oar.

Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything.

Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, culture corrects the theory of success.

The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

It's harder to be funny from the position of power.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.

I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book!

I'll tell you," said Beatty, smiling at his cards. "That made you for a little while a drunkard. Read a few lines and off you go over the cliff. Bang, you're ready to blow up the world, chop off heads, knock down women and children, destroy authority. I know. I've been through it all.

Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how.