Quotes About Power

Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.

The mind starts to do things that you didn't even realize it could do. I suppose it's the manipulation. I suppose it's the sense of power, the center of attention, and the me-ism. And performers have to have that.

'The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there's a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don't think that's necessarily true.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.

We are supposed to all be equal before the law, but we have a separate and distinct ruling class, and that is wrong.

As president, I'm not supposed to play games or show my hand, because there's a lot going on behind the scenes that you don't see or hear and don't need to know.

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.

Once I got into politics, I saw the real fight, where big money controls everything, and where politicians care more about campaign contributions than the people they're supposed to represent.

The press is supposed to serve as a check on government.

The Marshall is supposed to be 200 watts, but mine's never worked right; it peaks out at 80.

Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do.

Show me a supposedly 'unfixable' problem in Washington, and I'll show you the political corruption standing in the way.

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.

When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

Will Beijing really send out the army to suppress our protests? Never say never.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

In society, liberty for one may mean the suppression of liberty for others.

Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it.