Quotes About Power

She had never thought she would let a daughter of hers go away like this. But what could she do? Children grew up; they pleased themselves; they grew in power to go their own ways as you diminished in power to prevent them.

To be asked by her to do something filled him with pleasurable strength, as if she called all his powers into play. He felt able to move heaven and earth, he said to himself. She was his enthusiasm.

BDSM gives us permission to act in ways that are unacceptable in the outside world

In fact, what we do in S/M is that we act as though we were giving up or taking real-world power, while retaining the ability to keep as much power as we need to feel safe, or to take no more than we feel OK about having.

We think that this thought does a nice job of expressing the tension that often happens in good S/M – the "oh-my-god-this-is-terrible-please-don't-stop" energy that we all know and love.

nipple tug-of-war," in which two people both put on nipple clamps with chains running from one person to the other and lean backwards so that both sets of tits get a nice steady pull, is a good example.

In any S/M exchange there is a sharing of power – the bottom lends his power to the top for the duration, the top adds power, and together they make a lot of voltage. The top gets to wield all this power, a form of extreme empowerment that is exciting, thrilling, hot, erotic, and, as we said before, very, very sexy.

If I truly believe in some other people's inferiority, is it okay for me to play this out in scene? We hope not. Ideally, the top is pretending to be an oppressor that she doesn't identify with.

Many people view almost all relationships as interactions between victims and oppressors

Why would a person want to be beaten, humiliated, ordered around and otherwise inconvenienced so that you can feel big? Well, because bottoming is very, very sexy too. There is tremendous luxury in giving up responsibility and power to a top, in being small, possibly childlike, in having your behavior controlled, in getting nurtured while being subjected to all kinds of intense stimulations. Fear can be arousing…

Many of us find that the more we play, the closer we want to come to the gray area between "enough" and "too much," between consent and nonconsent. These desires may grow so strong that we feel that we're craving genuinely nonconsensual play – that we really do want to kidnap a stranger or whip a slave or punish a child.

Victory always starts in the head... It then spreads with such radiance and such affirmation that destiny can do nothing but obey.

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

Technology favors horrible people.

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

No one here is allowed to die without my permission.

For historical currents do not irresistibly propel themselves and everyone in their path. No matter what their broader structural or ideological roots, they both carry along and are carried along by people, who are not merely passengers of history, but pilots as well.

Cell phones are not a sign of power, they're a sign of subservience.

When you lived on the wrong side of the law, information, however vague or apparently meaningless, was everything. It gave you leverage. And leverage was power.

One of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them: It is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job. Another problem with governing people is people.

The major problem— one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

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

come to believe we're in a computer simulation anyway. None of this is real. We're all inside a game, and the winner is the one who gets the most points. Who amasses the most wealth and power. Even if they have to cheat.

Politics, noun: [Poly 'many' + tics 'blood-sucking parasites']" ?—Larry Hardiman