Quotes About Power

The truth travels over the earth secretly; it seeks a nest among the people. To the authorities it's like a knife in the fire. They cannot accept it. It will cut them and burn them. Truth is your good friend and a sworn enemy of the authorities — that's why it hides itself.

The Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.

One last unexploded mine remains, its exact location unknown and its hidden potency serving as something of a symbol of the Great War's underlying power to influence events down to the present day.

Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights.

The powerful try to frame the discussion in a way that benefits their interests, realizing that, in a democracy, they cannot simply impose their rule on others. In one way or another, they have to "co-opt" the rest of society to advance their agenda. Here

If economic power in a country becomes too unevenly distributed, political consequences will follow. While we typically think of the rule of law as being designed to protect the weak against the strong, and ordinary citizens against the privileged, those with wealth will use their political power to shape the rule of law to provide a framework within which they can exploit others.9

La desigualdad es una opción, no algo inevitable.

It is not particular judges who are bought but the laws themselves, through campaign contributions and lobbying, in what has come to be called "corruption, American-style." In some states judges are elected, and in those states there's an even closer connection between money and "justice." Monied interests use campaign contributions to get judges who are sympathetic to their causes.

What's worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to what they have. This

Nuestra economía no ha funcionado bien para vastas porciones del país, pero entretanto ha sido inmensamente gratificante para los que están en la cúpula. Sin duda, esta brecha cada vez más profunda es la raíz del actual dilema del país y el de muchos otros países avanzados.

Power—often military power—was at the origin of these inequities.

restaurar el equilibro otorgando, por ejemplo, mayor poder de negociación a los trabajadores. También supone brindar mayor apoyo a la investigación básica y mayor estímulo al sector privado para que se comprometa en la creación de riqueza en lugar de la búsqueda de renta.

Antes que una reforma económica habrá que hacer una reforma política.

The wealth given to the elites and to the bankers seemed to arise out of their ability and willingness to take advantage of others. One

especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote.

misshapen economy creates misshapen individuals and a misshapen society

the six heirs to the Wal-Mart empire command wealth of $69.7 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.

la guerra moderna de alta tecnología está diseñada para suprimir el contacto físico: arrojar bombas desde 50.000 pies logra que uno no «sienta» lo que hace, la administración económica moderna es similar, desde un hotel de lujo, uno puede forzar insensiblemente políticas sobre las cuales uno pensaría dos veces si conociera a las personas cuya vida va a destruir

En los problemas del FMI y las demás instituciones económicas internacionales subyace un problema de Gobierno: quién decide qué hacen. Las instituciones están dominadas no sólo por los países industrializados más ricos sino también por los intereses comerciales y financieros de esos países, lo que naturalmente se refleja en las políticas de dichas entidades

Trump doesn't have a plan to help the country; he has a plan to continue the robbery of the majority by those at the top.

There is another way for moneyed interests to get what they want out of government: convince the 99 percent that they have shared interests. This strategy requires an impressive sleight of hand; in many respects the interests of the 1 percent and the 99 percent differ markedly. The fact that the 1 percent has so successfully shaped public perception testifies to the malleability of beliefs. When others engage in it, we call it "brainwashing" and "propaganda."1

The American economy today is characterized, to too great an extent, by underregulated, monopolistic markets, where wealth creation has been replaced by exploitation.

Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America's moral authority, so the Bush administration's fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.

El aumento de las desigualdades corroe la confianza; tiene un impacto económico similar al de un disolvente universal. Crea un mundo económico en el que hasta los ganadores son precavidos. Y los perdedores… En toda transacción, en todo contacto con un jefe, una empresa o un burócrata, ven la mano de alguien que quiere aprovecharse de ellos.