Quotes About Power

The idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything.

Andy's mother, with her understated jewelry and her not-quite-interested smile – the kind of woman who could get on the phone with the mayor if she needed a favor – seemed

what mattered most, as I came to realize, was who'd lived in Vegas the longest, which was why the knock-down Mexican beauties and itinerant construction heirs sat alone at lunch while the bland, middling children of local realtors and car dealers were the cheerleaders and class presidents, the unchallenged elite of the school.

As we walked outside together, into the Christmas crowds, I felt unsteady and sorrowful; and the ribbon-wrapped buildings, the glitter of windows only deepened the oppressive sadness: dark winter skies, gray canyon of jewels and furs and all the power and melancholy of wealth

And here he was, the great one himself, scorching us all with his rays of glory.

installed herself as Wedding Obergruppenführer.

jeans jacket, catching him in a chokehold, pistol at

And what is beauty?" "Terror.

That Mossberg, Boris said to me, accepting the bottle passed over the front seat. Evil dirty thing. Sawed off--? sprays pellets here to Hamburg. Aim it way the fuck away from everyone and still you will hit half the people in the room.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the

Beauty is terror

Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it.

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself?

beauty is terror, whatever we call beauty we quiver before it

Um, we don't hit women in America.' He scowled, and spit out an apple seed. 'No. Americans just persecute smaller countries that believe different from them.

Elizabeth Blair of brother Frank: he could "not let even a great man set his small dogs on him without kicking the dog & giving his master some share of the resentment.

No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent.

The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country.

Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty," Henry Demarest Lloyd

The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State . . . and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master, instead of servant.

became postmaster general, and Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's "Mars," eventually became secretary

When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: "The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,'

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power?