Quotes About Power

Pero la naturaleza de los subordinados era usar el poder de manera intrépida, ya que la culpa siempre podía achacarse tanto a los de abajo como a los de arriba.

Why is it that the people who should be in authority are usually the people who don't want it, while the people who hold authority are usually the two-faced schemers who've stepped on people's backs to get it?

Power comes only by persuasion; by love and service. It comes from trying and learning.

Porque los que llegan a la cima en un imperio son los intrigantes, los asesinos o los señores de la guerra.

That's how war is fought, in case any of you have foolish ideas to the contrary. You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back. It's the strategy you use with diseases.

The leader only has as much power as his followers give him.

Bean also saw how the man's body moved inside his clothes, with a kind of contained strength that made his clothes seem like Kleenex, he could rip through the fabric just by tugging at it a little, because nothing could hold him in except his own self-control.

Ruling the world isn't a chess game," said Peter. "Or if it is, it's a game with a thousand powerful pieces and eight billion pawns, and the pieces keep changing their capabilities, and the gameboard never stays the same. So just how far ahead can you possibly see? All I could do was put myself into a position with the most possible influence, and then exploit whatever opportunities came.

Now...different rules of magic prevail; different words have power. Different customs are now required of everyone and you have to obey or pay. And so we all live in a world where other people hold the power, where other people are the mages who know how to whisper to different social elements and make things happen. And most of us stand around bewildered, wondering what the gods will do next to manipulate our lives.

I'm saying that America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.

They gave us the stardrive we used to get to them, and the weapon we used to kill them. They gave us everything.

Never mind,' said Mazer Rackham. 'The politicians are afraid of you, but they can't destroy your reputation yet. That won't be done until the historians get at you in thirty years.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids

Verily joined in. "My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.

Authority was a little plastic ball that Graff carried.

She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you. And many of your strong, brave enemies would match you in evil, too. The more you coerced others, the sooner you would bring yourself to the moment of your doom.

Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

The law didn't make witch trials happen. It was the hunger for witch trials that got them to make up the law.

People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.

I'm only a god, Vanya, not an expert.

Era algo nuevo en el mundo, dos reinas que se querían y se ayudaban en vez de combatir, y juntas fueron más fuertes que ninguna otra colmena.

There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn't think of.

Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?

You really are playing God." "I most certainly am not playing.