Quotes About Power

My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers. Compromise may work in politics. It's less appropriate to the realm of faith and belief.

Edison's admirers endowed him with fantastical powers that would permit him to invent anything he wished (one

You have the power to define yourself — remember that power; take that control. It's like a superpower, really, to be whom you want to be, to do what you want to do, to fly where you want to fly. Your life will get more complicated, but think of it as a great adventure, every damn day. You're going to have fun.

Unbalanced power poisons introspection. In its vacated space lay living society's imperative questions, unseen, unphrased, unasked, unanswered.

State and federal budgets, to which Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans contribute, are uniformly controlled by whites who seem to uniformly believe that the only ancestor worship worth funding is theirs.

Would-be Machiavellis, some long dead before the Florentine statesman himself ever lived, anticipate the historian's enquiries by booby-trapping evidence, laying false trails, and liquidating artifacts. (This might have been what Napoleon had in mind when he blew off the nose of the Sphinx. Or was it Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr who did it, in 1378 A.D.? No one really knows.)

you come with the imprimatur of power." "Imprimatur, huh?" "Seal of approval. In case you have to throw your weight around.

while "freedom" from magic is certainly invoked as a constitutive element of modern modes of subjectivity, this freedom is purchased only at the price of potent new forms of social control and regimentation." -- Making Magic , p. 13

Social power is at stake in theory-making, but the workings of this power are often unacknowledged -- and overdetermined. -- Making Magic , p. 23

With a cloak of naturalized rationalism, scholars can deflect our attention from the power effected in their theory-making. -- Randall Styers, Making Magic , p. 23

Maybe the gift of any great person is the power to converse with our own hearts.

You must understand that you do have the power to change your relationships and your life, but it is likely going to be frightening at first. The alternative is to live a fairly unhappy and unsatisfying life in which fear dictates your choices and their relationships.

Obey the warning signs; don't go into the wilderness alone; and don't believe for a moment that you are better, stronger, faster, or more nimble than the natural forces around you.

Philosophy cannot convince the bullet.

The vermin explain their sin with sanctimonious language like, "We've prayed about it and sought counsel, and we feel it's the right thing to do." Don't let it down on them that to the Enemy what they feel is inconsequential. His moral laws don't give a rip about how any of them feel. The sludgebags have no more power to vote them in and out of existence than they have power to revoke the law of gravity.

God moves in power, in signs and wonders—healing the sick, in deliverances, multiplying food for the hungry, raising the dead—primarily for this reason: He is good! And it is His desire to reveal His goodness—His glory—in all the earth.

So the principle is this: Wherever there is more faith, more happens. Whenever there is great faith, great things happen. Where there are more people of faith, more things happen in that congregation than in a congregation where there is less faith. It is that simple. Jesus Himself could do no mighty deeds in Nazareth because of the unbelief of the people there (see Matt. 13: 58).

My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Corinthians 2: 4). In the same letter he wrote, "For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power," and he speaks of the Holy Spirit giving "the working of miracles" (1 Corinthians 4: 20; 12: 10).

accompanied by demonstrations of the power and glory of God. Even the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit pale in comparison to those times when God chooses to "rend the heavens and come down" in His glory. His glory produces many more healings and powerful impartations than any of His gifts. This is entirely consistent with God's

faith acted upon in obedience brings the miraculous.

One suspects that, at some level, progressives grasp the power of this dynamic, which is why they advocate for national legislation for every problem to defeat the individual liberty that federalism helps secure.

Rivka believed that HaShem was both all-good and all-powerful—so good that he created people, so powerful that he gave them free will. And that made evil possible. If men could not choose evil, then they were not free. Therefore, the existence of evil was proof of HaShem's great power to create those who could choose to oppose him.

Words were something, and it was a lie from the enemy to say words were nothing. Words were something, because words led to actions. As a man thinks, so he is. As he speaks, so he becomes.

I would think flying would be pretty cool. You would be able to fly away from all your enemies and get where you're going much faster. But being invisible? You probably wouldn't use that for the good of man.