Quotes About Power

Thomas, first Baron Wharton of Wharton, sat in his chair. "Boy," he said. "Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed...

You see someone before you who is not afraid to say what he thinks, provided he is in a position of ascendancy with a door open behind him and a knife gripped in each hand.

Philippa. You gave your husband a brevet to absent himself from his responsibilities. I have cancelled it.

Men fall short of your desire, and so you abandon men. The Crown falls short of your expectations, and you abandon the Crown. A leader with no following is an aerolite unloosed, M. Crawford, its power blinding and blistering where it wantonly falls, until it burns itself out. To take a puny man and make him great is your gift.

If they thought their sovereignty worth keeping, the handful of lords who divided Scotland between them must unite. And unite before religious division caught and struck them apart for ever.

Do you think he will notice?' Danny said. 'I sometimes feel if I placed myself nude on the floor between the Voevoda and one of his meetings, he wouldn't even walk round me.

You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance.

Modern war is fought by a number of strong, sweaty horsemen with constipation, who have their eyes on power, on wealth and on glory, and who obey the rules just when it pleases them.

I don't need to strike you. Words will do just as well.

He said, 'Don't. That is not a weapon for you. And it destroys what we have.' 'But I have nothing, yet,' Philippa said. 'And all the nicety is on your side. Which means I choose any weapon that suits me.

You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don't know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don't build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose.

Music, the knife without a hilt.

It was odd, Adam thought, that Lymond's harshest opponent should be his brother, and that each man had such power to hurt the other.

Lord Culter watched them come. There was about him none of the mad abandon of the bridegroom. A sober, thickset figure with brown hair and reliable grey eyes, Richard Crawford in his thirties was a man of wealth and tried power. He waited, his face stony, and before Buccleuch opened his mouth, he spoke. "If it's about Lymond, don't trouble, Buccleuch." "It's about Lymond," said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.

We've all those, and we've the rest, like yourself, who carry the throne on their backs from generation to generation—maybe just because you've so much at stake in Scotland that there's no other game worth the risk; still you do it.

Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the

Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences.

Reindeer blew like leaves across the white, blinding bowl of the landscape. The eye read them as script on a book-roll: the stretched neck, the tined bones of the antlers, the powerful, thick-pelted body; the long slurring stride with its snapping click as the cloven hooves met.

A queen does not need to be crowned,' said Güzel, 'in order to rule.

I'm going back to Russia. That's where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies.

He couldn't succeed Richard now, certainly," said Janet. "But if the English took over? Criminals at the horn with the right kind of politics have died in silk sheets before now." "So they say. Perhaps it's lucky then," said Sybilla, "that this criminal has cheated his way out of favour with every party in Europe.

That's what terrorism is, basically—pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.

If I take a finger and touch you, you won't even know you've been tapped. If I take two fingers, you will know that something touched you. But if I bring all of those fingers together in a fist, I can give you a terrible blow!

My husband would do anything for me ...' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another. It's a very real power, Harriet. Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail.