Quotes About Power

You put us on a pedestal in order to look up our skirts.

That was another nice thing about my parents. There was none of that holding on to knowledge and power that some parents go in for. We were all adults together, on a plateau of equality.

Fear: what did those who inflicted it know? They knew that it worked, even how it worked, but not what it felt like. 'The wolf cannot speak of the fear of the sheep,' as they say.

Khrennikov had an average ear for music, but perfect pitch when it came to power.

History is the lies of the victors," I replied, a little too quickly. "Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.

It's a recurrent delusion that a change of government will make a difference.

It seemed that Soviet power had finally decided to love him; and he had never felt a clammier embrace.

The whole dream of democracy,' he wrote, 'is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.

Those who survive, or excel, or overmaster are merely those who are better organised and wave bigger guns; those who are better at killing.

He took his own life' is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same?

The government had been talking about sexually transmitted disease. But it was the same with words: they too could be sexually transmitted.

A fi rus însemna a fi pesimist; a fi sovietic însemna a fi optimist. De aceea cuvintele <> erau o contradicÈ›ie de termeni. Puterea nu înÈ›elesese niciodat? acest lucru. Ea credea c? dac? ucideai o bun? parte a populaÈ›iei, iar pentru restul instaurai un regim de propagand? È™i teroare, obÈ›ineai optimism.

She said I'd poison his mind and make him a fascist. I said she'd poison his body and make him an addict.

Ich kenne den hochmoralischen Ton nur zu gut, den die rotnasigen Alkoholiker unter den Journalisten so gern anschlagen, wenn sie sich über die Fehltritte der Großen auslassen.

She spoke like a tsar issuing a ukase, and it was clear she would brook no further argument.

Others went further: on one of Stanley's expeditions, James Jameson, heir to an Irish whiskey fortune, bought an eleven-year-old girl so he could sketch her being dismembered and eaten.

Because that's what happened to fury when tenderness was applied. It dissolved.

It's…" She couldn't finish. "Don't try, Miss Redmond," he agreed, shading his eyes. "There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm.

How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore.

Even cliffs are vulnerable, Captain Eversea, she thought. The sea gets at them, eventually, reshaping them inexorably, giving them no choice at all in the matter.

Good God. She was Wellington with eyelashes.

After all, "justice" was really another word for commerce, something every man at the mercy of it eventually learns.

Ah, now, he soothed in his low, easy voice, the way he would a spooked horse or a woman whose bodice he was about to slip lower. It worked a treat. Her pupils dilated in sudden interest, for it was 'that' kind of voice and she was a woman after all. She'd decided he was attractive and pleasant and she visibly softened. When he bothered to use that tone on women they generally did.

Never question the sanity of a woman who can render you defenseless with a look.