Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

power

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

Power without abuse loses its charm.

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing to be able to dare!

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

Beauty is power a smile is its sword.

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.

Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

The sword is the axis of the world and its power is absolute.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Words, without power, is mere philosophy.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture.

To have what we want is riches but to be able to do without is power.

To use the power of the bison, I had to perform that part of my vision for the people to see.

We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power.

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Expose yourself to your deepest fear after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

For it pleased God, after he had made all things by the word of his power, to create man after his own image.

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.

I cured with the power that came through me.

Never go backward. Attempt, and do it with all your might. Determination is power.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'

But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.

Knowledge is power.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory they have no power over the substance of original justice.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

Don't let your will roar when your power only whispers.

I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions.

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.

In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support (salary) is a power over his will.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Power is paradoxical.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will.

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

Words derive their power from the original word.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

A witty woman is a treasure a witty beauty is a power.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.

How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?

In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.

The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

Beauty attracts us men but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold and silver, it attracts with tenfold power.

But the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

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.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

The people are the government, administering it by their agents they are the government, the sovereign power.

The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

Character is power.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfillment.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

The law always limits every power it gives.

The love of liberty is the love of others the love of power is the love of ourselves.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

Power is action the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

Every crisis offers you extra desired power.

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

Power is dangerous unless you have humility.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.

Power without a nation's confidence is nothing.

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

The most efficient water power in the world - women's tears.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

When every physical and mental resources is focused, one's power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

A true king is neither husband nor father he considers his throne and nothing else.

Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the worlds work, and the power to appreciate life.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted and pure love without power is destroyed.

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Power and position often make a man trifle with the truth.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

Only he deserves power who every day justifies it.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

Power does not corrupt men fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

The power to define the situation is the ultimate power.

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Where love rules, there is no will to power and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.

Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.

O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.

Prestige is the shadow of money and power.

The party in power, like Jonah's gourd, grew up quickly, and will quickly fall.

There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man's reasoning powers.

But the cause for which we fought was higher our thought wider... That thought was our power.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

If a man achieves victory over this body, who in the world can exercise power over him? He who rules himself rules over the whole world.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.

Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success!

Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

Order is power.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.