Quotes About Power

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne—Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song,— One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull...

Wealth may be an ancient thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Democracy has a habit of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the powers-that-be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers-that-ought-to-be

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?

It wasn't so much that my mother always had to have her own way; it was more that if you disagreed with her, the rhetorical power this unleashed would shock you into seeing things from her point of view. The minute she sensed resistance, all of her intellect would be summoned into an irresistible arrowhead of purpose, and the most sensible strategic approach was therefore never to disagree with her too forcefully.

No bishop, no king"; he might have added, "No devil, no divine right.

When you let the wolves guard the hen house, there's bound to be a few chicken dinners.

Every degree of power involves a corresponding degree of freedo from good and evil.

But the term of man and woman, of king or queen, is set in the stars, and there is no escaping Doom for any one;

I hate that I have to spend half my life doing a job I hate for a boss I can't stand.' 'Haha, yeah, we live in a society.' 'The point isn't that we live in it, but that we built it. And we could just have easily built it differently.

No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.

We can't afford to let the Illuminati have another victory, Janus.

Halil could sense the cruel-eyed man humming with the power to end his life, straining at the leash like a snarling dog.

Emperor or Warmaster, he didn't give a damn whose name he had to salute. He had no respect for any of them.

Lightning does not come from underground

A teacher expressed the feeling of many Americans: After Watergate, it's crazy to have trust in politicians. I'm totally cynical, skeptical. Whether it's a question of power or influence, it's who you know at all levels. Nixon said he was the sovereign! Can you believe that? I was indignant. Someone should have told him that this is a democracy, not a monarchy.32

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave.

It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we find beautiful, we quiver before it.

Wedding Obergruppenführer

and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty—a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room.

controlling.