Quotes About Power

Man is an indolent creature, but light the fire of fear under him, and of what miracles is he not capable.

Anyone who does not see that there is a 'struggle for power' element is naïve; anyone who sees nothing but this aspect is a false realist.

The loss of the greater part of the American empire in the twenties had left no psychological scar, for it was lost in a civil war, of metropolitan against colonial Spaniards. Cuba was wrenched from Spain by defeat at the hands of a foreign power her press had taught her to despise as a nation of vulgar meat-vendors or to fear as a Colossus. It was the public destruction of the image of Spain as a great power which turned defeat into moral disaster.

It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine-- the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me.

There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.

To hell with the rich, they make me sick.

Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment. - on Hollywood

There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop.

He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country.

The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They're topped by too many smart minds.

All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.

Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there's competition—hard tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories. Just so long as it doesn't damage the prestige and privilege and position of the owners. If it does, down comes the lid.

The butler went away among the abominable plants. The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you.

Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.

The law is where you buy it and what you pay for it.

Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.

Gano muchísima pasta. Tengo que ganar muchísima pasta para untar a los tipos a los que tengo que untar para ganar muchísima pasta y untar así a los tipos que tengo que untar.

You're the second guy I've met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.

No estoy dispuesto a hablar, Eddie. ¿Por qué iba a hacerlo? Dejó la pistola sobre el escritorio y la golpeó con la mano abierta. - Esto -dijo-. Y yo podría hacer que le resultara provechoso. - Ya, eso suena mejor. No meta la pistola en este asunto. Yo siempre estoy dispuesto a escuchar el sonido del dinero.

Dont get fancy, buster. I might loosen your jaw for you. Ha, ha, I said. You might play centre field for the Yankees and hit a home run with a breadstick.

Once outside the law you're all the way outside. You think he's just a gambler. I think he's a pornographer, a blackmailer, a hot car broker, a killer by remote control, and a suborner of crooked cops. He's whatever looks good to him, whatever has the cabbage pinned to it. Don't try to sell me on any high-souled racketeers. They don't come in that pattern.