Quotes About Power

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

We are like water, aren't we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too." And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.

A man and only a man can become a Buddha. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavours. [...] Man's position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny.

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The greatest power is not money power, but political power.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

[The British monarchy:] Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.

So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to understanding.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

The abstract thinking of the world is never to be expected of persons in high places...

The splitting of sovereignty into many parts amounts to there being no sovereign.

Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement is impeded, is the primitive check on base power.

U]nder a presidential government a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

The English constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good: the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority.

God rested when he had left his creative power to itself in man.

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule.