Quotes About Power

John O'Sullivan has forcefully argued that the simultaneous presence in the highest offices of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II was the cause of the Soviet collapse.3 And my own experience confirms this.

The pursuit of abstract social justice goes hand in hand with the view that power struggles and relations of domination express the truth of our social condition, and that the consensual customs, inherited institutions and systems of law that have brought peace to real communities are merely the disguises worn by power. The goal is to seize that power, and to use it to liberate the oppressed, distributing all the assets of society according to the just requirements of the plan.

At the same time, instead of limiting the power of the state, alleged human rights have begun to enhance that power, and to bring the state into all our disputes on the side of the favoured party. Rights

The Anglo-American tradition of constitutional thinking should be understood in this way, as addressing the question of how to limit the power of government, without losing its benefits. That

This law is implanted in us by reason, and God himself obeys it. If human beings do not obey the natural law it is because reason does not entirely govern their behavior. The purpose of a legal is to provide an effective substitute for reason in the motives of unreasonable men. He added, however, that rights are nothing without the power which would enforce them, and therefore that power, not right, is the basic fact of politics." -Spinoza

Two accusations against our political inheritance have lodged in the brains that I have examined in this book: first, that 'capitalist' society is founded on power and domination; second, that 'capitalism' means 'commodification', the reduction of people to things, and the fetishizing of things as agents.

The condition of society is essentially one of domination, in which people are bound to each other by their attachments, and distinguished by rivalries and competition.

The common law of England is proof that there is a real distinction between legitimate and illegitimate power, that power can exist without oppression, and that authority is a living force in human conduct. English law, I discovered, is the answer to Foucault.

Metaphors make connections with are not contained in the fabric of reality but created by our own associative powers. The important question about a metaphor is not what property it stands for, but what experience it suggests.

Subsequent revolutions have in like manner regarded the Church as Public Enemy number 1, precisely because it creates a realm of value and authority outside the reach of the state. It

Government is not what so many conservatives believe it to be, and what people on the left always believe it to be when it is in other hands than their own – namely a system of power and domination.

When the Communist Party took over Eastern Europe, its first work was to destroy the civil associations that it did not control.

I would never rest until I held vengeance and the throne within my hand, and good night sweet prince to anybody who stood between me and these things.

Then every man would be as a god, you see. The result of this, of course, would be that there would no longer be any gods, only men. We would give them knowledge of the sciences and the arts, which we possess, and in so doing we would destroy their simple faith and remove all basis for their hoping that things will be better—for the best way to destroy faith or hope is to let it be realized.

Tonight I will suck the marrow from your bones!" it said. "I will dry them and work them most cunningly into instruments of music! Whenever I play upon them, your spirit will writhe in bodiless agony!" "You burn prettily," I said.

I was willing to die fighting, but it was senseless for all these men to go down with me. Perhaps my blood was tainted, despite my power over the Pattern. A true prince of Amber should have had no such qualms. I decided then that my centuries on the Shadow Earth had changed me, softened me perhaps, had done something to me which made me unlike my brothers.

I have a better idea,' said she. 'Know that under a mortal name am I mistress of the Palace of Kama in Khaipur.' 'The Fornicatorium, madam?' She frowned. 'As such is it often known to the vulgar, and do not call me 'madam' in the same breath-- it smacks of ancient jest. It is a place of rest, pleasure, holiness and much of my revenue.

The Keeper of Clouds has unpenned his charges. The Keeper of Winds has unlocked his gates. The Keeper of Waters has opened the sky. The Keeper of Lightnings waves his lances. The Keeper of satellites has observed, 'One hundred percent of probability of precipitation.

Power is like money... You can usually get it if you're competent and it's the only thing you want in life.

Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that

All roads lead to Amber, he said, as though it were an axiom.

But it is written that it is better to burn one city than to curse the darkness.

What an enormous chutzpah you possess, I told him. What makes you better than the rest of us, and more fit to rule? The fact that I was able to occupy the throne, he replied. Try and take it.

Sometimes the mills of the gods grind too damned fast and we get buried in grist