Quotes About Power

The power of myth lies in its ability to represent ourselves to ourselves. A myth is a story that expresses, but does not explain a universal human experience...The best myths have immediacy. We get them, see ourselves through them. They are mirrors.

the Dreadnought's predecessors of the King Edward VII class with a standard displacement of 16,350 tons could steam at 18.5 knots with 18,000 h.p. from their reciprocating engines; Dreadnought, of 17,900 tons, steamed 21.6 knots on her trials from 23,000 h.p.

Sims revolutionized American gunnery in the early years of the century, was Mahan's leading contestant in the Dreadnought controversy, and commanded the United States Naval Forces in European waters in the First World War. Sims's reasoned, sagacious, and totally crushing attack on the Mahan school decided American battleship construction policy in the vital years leading to 1912. Sims made America a major maritime power.

Under the pressure of opinion of this weight, applied without let-up during the crucial years of the Fisher-Tirpitz battleship race, it is understandable that arithmetic won the day in Britain, and sight was sometimes lost of the less exciting factors that contributed vitally to a battle fleet's efficiency and fighting power.

Narrative history fell out of fashion for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians everywhere focused on analytical approaches derived mainly from the social sciences. But a variety of recent, large-scale narrative histories have shown that it can be done without sacrificing analytical rigour or explanatory power.

People make their own history, as Karl Marx once memorably observed, but not under conditions of their own choosing.

By 1930 at the latest, it had become clear that the Presidential power was in the hands of a man who had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies.

Heinrich Himmler declared: 'Whether 10,000 Russian women collapse with exhaustion in the construction of an anti-tank ditch for Germany only interests me insofar as the ditch gets dug for Germany.

With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean—in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written—with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the note of my soul, redoubling my own voice by their power.

In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay. QUELLCRIST

Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.

Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know.

The essence of control is to remain hidden from view, is it not?

Wealth, in his experience, was not something the people who had it were at all keen to see trickling anywhere.

Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT—WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT FOR A WHILE?

What you feel is not yours. You need not own it. Creatures like these breed the fear in you as we fatten a buffalo calf, and with similar intent.

Choose your feelings as you would a weapon. This is what it is to be Majak.

Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash

Rich people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men and women are just merchandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them, decant them. Sign at the bottom, please. On

Do I look like a fucking slave to you?" he asked them. And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.

You can't talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on.

Dig down into the blood depths of hormonal bedrock, where violence and sex and power grow fibrously entwined. It's a murky, complicated place down there. No telling what you'll drag up once you start excavating.

Do I look like a fucking slave to you? he asked them. And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.