Quotes About Power

What saves us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great—great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives—has come from reflection.

The encounter did not leave behind with Chief Inspector Heat that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow creatures is flattered as worthily as it deserves.

I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.

it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty

It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they always are, those struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be, this precious notion of a convention, only one of the rules of the game, nothing more, but all the same so terribly effective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts, by the awful penalties of its failure.

The sea—this truth must be confessed—has no generosity. No display of manly qualities—courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness—has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only.

Eran conquistadores, y eso lo único que requiere es fuerza bruta, nada de lo que pueda uno vanagloriarse cuando se posee, ya que la fuerza no es sino una casualidad nacida de la debilidad de los otros.

The field of influence was great and infinitely varied - once one had conquered a name.

But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

Tale è la potenza disgregatrice di un uragano: essa isola l'individuo dai suoi simili. Un terremoto, una frana, una valanga soverchiano l'uomo incidentalmente, per così dire senza passione. La furia dell'uragano invece lo attacca come un nemico personale, cerca di afferrargli le membra, gli s'abbarbica alla mente, tenta di sradicare da lui perfino l'anima.

La fuerza no es sino una casualidad nacida de la debilidad de los otros.

You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

My task...is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see. That - and no more - and it is everything.

A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river.

I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit—it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience.

Conrad regarded the formation of a representative government in Russia as unfeasible and foresaw a transition from autocracy to dictatorship.

The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing.

Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind;

Pero ellos no tenían nada en que apoyarse. No eran colonizadores, y sospecho que su administración no era más que una opresión, solo eso.

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.  Revolution, legality—counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.

strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

Everything in the world reminded him of her.  The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature.  The swelling outlines of the hills, the curves of a coast, the free sinuosities of a river are less suave than the harmonious lines of her body, and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her progress suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating aspects of the visible world.