Quotes About Power

Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever.

What chains can hold belongs to men. The rest is Gods.

Given a choice between patterns of subsistence that are relatively unfavorable to the cultivator but which yield a greater return in manpower or grain to the state and those patterns that benefit the cultivator but deprive the state, the ruler will choose the former every time. The ruler, then, maximizes the state-accessible product, if necessary, at the expense of the overall wealth of the realm and its subjects.

After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience.

modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in imperial rhetoric, as a "civilizing mission.

The Bible contains many stories of dysfunctional heroes because its purpose is to show us our exceptional God, a God of love and grace and power; who works through people who have limitations - just like we do. These stories help us develop a vocabulary to identify and describe the reality of brokenness in our own lives.

I'm the king of the world!

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.

I'm King Of The World!!!

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.

The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun.

Every single time it was grand. I loved the moment when you announce the stickup and everything suddenly goes brighter and sharper and the world seems to spin faster. You show them the gun and say hand it over and there's no telling what's going to happen in the next tick of the clock.

In the age of the Me Too movement, at last the Roman Catholic priesthood — considered as a whole — must be understood, quite simply, as a male supremacist institution.

The Pope's critics among his fellow prelates have engaged in entry, rumormongering, leaks, and open defiance — a desperate rearguard effort aimed at weakening a Pope deemed insufficiently committed to the protection of clerical power.

A power structure that is accountable only to itself will always end by abusing the powerless. If exposed, it will ask, paternalistically, to be allowed to repair the damage on its own.

Respect for everyone he met. The preference of service over power. The rejection of violence. Israel—its Law and worship—as the primal source of meaning.

The only thing more dangerous than a politician who thinks about re-election, is a politician who doesn't think about re-election.

No matter what his position or experience in life, there is in everyone more latent than developed ability far more unused than used power.

And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.

First the priests arrive. Then the conquistadores.

Of what real value is a title? The power is the only important thing

You're a cruel, cold-gutted, heartless bastard but you've got majesty, no doubt about that.

The held fast to Deng Xiaoping's dictum: 'Hide your strength and bide your time'.

I do not know everything and I am far from perfect but the little I do know makes me dangerous if you ever get on my bad side or mess with my family