Quotes About Power

We are strong only because of our weaknesses and fears

Anything can be brought into existence with a powerful mind and a willing signature

All you need to do is to get your heart right and God will give your mind an upgrade and place you in the right position of power for your life

Words without a heartbeat are just great words

Master your mind and you will master your life

Republican theory clearly stated that the people held all political power, and only they could delegate authority to a government. The people were free to change governments at will. They didn't need permission from incumbents.

True combat power is arms multiplied by fighting spirit. If one of them is infinitely strong, you will succeed. —Asahi Shimbun newspaper, quoted in Japan at War: An Oral History

People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will?

Most academic battles involve space or faculty appointments and promotions.

Knowledge is not power, Knowledge plus action is power, knowledge without action is dead

Knowledge plus action is power

Microprocessing reduces the size that groups must stain in order to be effective in the use and control of violence.

Lane, "Economic Consequences of Organized Violence," op. cit.

In two previous volumes, Blood in the Streets and The Great Reckoning, we argued that the most important causes of change are not to be found in political manifestos or in the pronouncements of dead economists, but in the hidden factors that alter the boundaries where power is exercised. Often, subtle changes in climate, topography, microbes, and technology alter the logic of violence. They transform the way people organize their livelihoods and defend themselves.

There is a striking analogy between the situation at the end of the fifteenth century, when life had become thoroughly saturated by organized religion, and that of today, when the world has become saturated with politics.

At the end of the fifteenth century, the Church largely controlled the regulatory powers that have since been assumed by governments. The Church dominated important areas of law, recording deeds, registering marriages, probating wills, licensing trades, titling land, and stipulating terms and conditions of commerce.

The technology of the Information Age makes it possible to create assets that are outside the reach of many forms of coercion. This new asymmetry between protection and extortion rests upon a fundamental truth of mathematics.

The power to regulate arbitrarily is also the power to sell an exemption from the harm such regulations can do. The Church sold permits, or "indulgences," authorizing everything from relief from petty burdens on commerce to permission to eat dairy products in Lent.

new revolution of power which is liberating individuals at the expense of the twentieth-century nation-state.

This tended to increase the size of societies because contests of violence more often than not were won by the larger group.

The Information Revolution will destroy the monopoly of power of the nation-state as surely as the Gunpowder Revolution destroyed the Church's monopoly.

Efficiency will become more important than the dictates of power in the organization of social institutions. This means that provinces and even cities that can effectively uphold property rights and provide for the administration of justice, while consuming few resources, will be viable sovereignties in the Information Age, as they generally have not been during the last five centuries.

The control of violence is the most important dilemma every society faces.

The nation-state will devolve like an unwieldy conglomerate, but probably not before it is forced to do so by financial crises.