Quotes About Power

Tal como nos enseña la naturaleza, cuando una persona se comporta sumisamente, realmente está intentando apaciguar a alguien que se percibe como amenazante (depredador) o reconociendo su superioridad.

El amor no es tan poderoso.

La potencia intelectual de un hombre se mide por la dosis de humor que es capaz de utilizar. NIETZSCHE

After all, if there is no class stratification in a society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its own interests.

The] association of wealth with whites and poverty with blacks is not accidental. It is the nature of the imperialist relationship that enriches the metropolis at the expense of the colony i.e. it makes the whites richer and the blacks poorer.

The white world defines who is white and who is black.

Malcolm X, our martyred brother, became the greatest threat to white power in the USA because he began to seek a broader basis for his efforts in Africa and Asia, and he was probably the first individual who was prepared to bring the race question in the US up before the UN as an issue of international importance.

There is the mistaken belief that black people achieved power with independence (e.g., Malaya, Jamaica, Kenya), but a black man ruling a dependent state within the imperialist system has now power. He is simply an agent of the whites in the metropolis, with an army and a police force designed to maintain the imperialist way of things in that particular colonial area.

Black Power is not racially intolerant. It is the hope of the black man that he should have power over his own destinies. This is not incompatible with a multiracial society where each individual counts equally. Because the moment that power is equitably distributed among several ethnic groups, the very relevance of making the distinction between groups will be lost.

If economic power is centered outside national African boundaries, then political and military power in any real sense is also centered outside until, and unless, the masses of peasants and workers are mobilized to offer an alternative to the system of sham political independence. All

In argument, truth always prevails finally in politics, falsehood always.

Ah what avails the sceptred race,Ah what the form divine!

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!

For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.

Harboring enmity and seeking revenge only perpetuates the power of oppressors to lord it over their victims long after the deed was done. Thus, at the most fundamental level, forgiveness spells liberation for the victim

Jesus does not encourage Jews to walk a second mile in order to build up merit in heaven, or to be pious, or to kill the soldier with kindness. He is helping an oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice despised throughout the empire. He is not giving a nonpolitical message of spiritual world transcendence. He is formulating a worldly spirituality in which the people at the bottom of society or under the thumb of imperial power learn to recover their humanity.

An egalitarian society presupposes nonviolence, for violence is the way some are able to deprive others of what is justly theirs. Inequality can only be maintained by violence. The root of violence, moreover, is domination.

Neutrality in a situation of oppression always supports the status quo.

In the final analysis, then, love of enemies is trusting God for the miracle of divine forgiveness. If God can forgive, redeem, and transform me, I must also believe that God can work such wonders with anyone. Love of enemies is seeing one's oppressors through the prism of the Reign of God--not only as they now are but also as they can become: transformed by the power of God.

Neutrality in a situation of oppression always supports the status quo. Reduction of conflict by means of a phony "peace" is not a Christian goal. Justice is the goal, and that may require an acceleration of conflict as a necessary stage in forcing those in power to bring about genuine change.

Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means.

Unjust systems perpetuate themselves by means of institutionalized violence.

The ultimate weakness of violence," observed Martin Luther King, Jr., "is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.