Quotes About Power

Coveting power for power's sake was a "base" pursuit

Berlin, moreover, was not yet the supercharged outpost it would become within the year. There existed at this time a widespread perception that Hitler's government could not possibly endure. Germany's military power was limited—its army, the Reichswehr, had only one hundred thousand men, no match for the military forces of neighboring France, let alone the combined might of France, England, Poland, and the Soviet Union.

Hardly anyone thought that the threats against the Jews were meant seriously," wrote Carl Zuckmayer, a Jewish writer. "Even many Jews considered the savage anti-Semitic rantings of the Nazis merely a propaganda device, a line the Nazis would drop as soon as they won governmental power and were entrusted with public responsibilities.

no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.

Within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he'll squeak." It was possibly the greatest miscalculation of the twentieth century.

Rudolf Diels, the young chief of the Gestapo. He moved with ease and confidence, yet unlike Putzi Hanfstaengl, who invaded a room, he entered unobtrusively, seeping in like a malevolent fog.

Where in May 1915 the navy had only thirty U-boats, by 1917 it had more than one hundred, many larger and more powerful than Schwieger's U-20 and carrying more torpedoes.

These were men, wrote Lincoln Steffens, "who will not have an office unless it is up where the air is cool and fresh, the outlook broad and beautiful, and where there is silence in the heart of business.

An airplane carrying Hitler, Göring and Goebbels crashes. All three are killed. Who is saved?" Answer: "The German People.

I think Rome at its worst had nothing on Chicago during those lurid days.

He could look at himself in a mirror and tell himself that he was one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world... He could feel that he was a god in disguise.

Oliver Cromwell in 1653: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God, go!

Mistrust must be sown of the plutocratic ruling caste, and fear must be instilled of what is about to befall. All this must be laid on as thick as possible

We believe in the Führer's powers of divination. We know that anything which now seems to be going against us will turn out to be most fortunate for us in the end." Goebbels knew, of course

After a few minutes, Churchill broke the silence, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." The remark had such power that Ismay quoted it to his wife after returning home. He had no idea that Churchill would soon deploy the line in one of his most famous speeches.

scarify, a six-hundred-year-old word that only Churchill would use in crucial diplomatic correspondence—" would scarify their names for a thousand years of history.

But you will ride it—instead of being driven before it—Thank Heaven that you are there, & at the helm of our destiny

With the physique of a bank safe, he was the embodiment of quiet strength.

Stature [was] a powerful lure in this age when pride of place ranked second only to pride of blood.

What he craved was possession and the power it gave him; what he adored was anticipation - the slow acquisition of love, then life, and finally the secrets within. The ultimate disposition of the material was irrelevant, a recreation.

One immense German bomb, a thirteen-foot, four-thousand-pounder named Satan, could destroy an entire city block.

Stanley Baldwin, then deputy prime minister, gave the House of Commons a forecast of what was to come: "I think it is well for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through." The only effective defense lay in offense, he said, "which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.

The Fringes of Power; the work

Unhappily, it depends upon the attitude of a single submarine commander whether America will or will not declare war.