Quotes About Power

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

Let us not, then, daringly stand by, and say thus it was fashioned, and so it was formed, but by our silence acknowledge that it never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive how the Almighty Creator laid the foundation of the world.

Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were executed because of the unsettling, threatening power of their souls, which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words.

the best way to be allowed to do something was to do it with authority and put the onus on someone to stop you.

now they were expected to walk with a heavy step and newfound power through their neighborhoods. In every other part of the city, however, they were still expected to vanish, or worse.

The Kluxers are about more than the color of skin. We are the moral authority.

They had each survived into adulthood by proceeding warily, yet now they were expected to walk with a heavy step and newfound power through their neighborhoods. In every other part of the city, however, they were still expected to vanish, or worse.

What mighty ills have not been done by woman!Who was 't betrayed the Capitol?—A woman!Who lost Mark Antony the world?—A woman!Who was the cause of a long ten years' war,And laid at last old Troy in ashes?—Woman!Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!

Thomas P. O'Neill (Jr.)

Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every [human], has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other [human] the free exercise of the same rights.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.

It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world

He that is the author of war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.

To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says, No, to this question, is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own law, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.