Quotes About Power

It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.

The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet.

If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

Urs Fischer specializes in making jaws drop. Cutting giant holes in gallery walls, digging a crater in Gavin Brown's gallery floor in 2007, creating amazing hyperrealist wallpaper for a group show at Tony Shafrazi: It all percolates with uncanny destructiveness, operatic uncontrollability, and barbaric sculptural power.

When we went to Iraq, we stayed in one of Saddam's palaces. It was kind of creepy. If those walls could talk, there's no telling what stories they'd tell.

Calling China's online censorship system a 'Great Firewall' is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools.

People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.

'Crumbling' Down' is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor.

Poetry and prose can start a revolution, break walls, and ideas can build nations.

Notoriously, in 1975, Murdoch abused his position as a newspaper owner to support a plot that ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam, who had dared to wander away from the mogul's path.

As we wander, grieving, in yet another dark moment, amid our pain we must struggle to remember the redemptive power of love and hope.

I don't blame the players today for the money. I blame the owners. They started it. They wanna give it to 'em? More power to 'em.

I wanna sit behind the scenes and see nothin' but the greens.

I don't want to overthrow the government. I wanna fire 'em.

I wanna be in action movies, I wanna be the tough guy... I wanna scare people.

If I wanna be president, I probably can.

Yeah - I wanna be the sister to Khaleesi in 'Game of Thrones.' I wanna be a dragon lady; that would be really fun!

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

I was a child among the lions. Now I want to be one of those lions.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.