Quotes About Power

Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history... There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions.

Die Rede erobert den Gedanken, aber die Schrift beherrscht ihn.

oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.

American colleges and universities are propaganda machines

He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe, Joanna Hoffman said. It's a common trait in people who are charismatic and know how to manipulate people. Knowing that he can crush you makes you feel weakened and eager for his approval, so then he can elevate you and put you on a pedestal and own you.

Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.

Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.

Steve's head dropped and stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world? Sculley felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. There was no response possible other than to acquiesce. He had a uncanny ability to always get what he wanted, to size up a person and know exactly what to say to reach a person, Sculley recalled.

If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake," he said. "Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister." Freedom was a foundation for creativity.

Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny," he warned the Russian scientists. "The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information as well as over the existence of every single citizen.

While at Windsor Castle looking at the swirling power of the "Deluge drawings" that he made near the end of his life, I asked the curator, Martin Clayton, whether he thought Leonardo had done them as works of art or of science. Even as I spoke, I realized it was a dumb question. "I do not think that Leonardo would have made that distinction," he replied.

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

Men ought not to play God before they learn to be men.

The republic was not, however, democratic or egalitarian. In fact, it was barely a republic. Exercising power from behind its façade was the Medici family, the phenomenally wealthy bankers who dominated Florentine politics and culture during the fifteenth century without holding office or hereditary title. (In the following century they became hereditary dukes, and lesser family members became popes.)

With his finely honed ability to see both beauty and ugliness, Leonardo was able to create a satirical combination in his grotesques. As he wrote in his notes for his treatise on painting, "If the painter wishes to see beauties that charm him, it lies within his power to create them; and if he wishes to see monstrosities that are frightful, buffoonish, or ridiculous, or pitiable, he can be lord thereof." 20

Tribble recalled that he adopted the phrase from the "Menagerie" episodes of Star Trek, "in which the aliens create their own new world through sheer mental force." He meant the phrase to be a compliment as well as a caution: "It was dangerous to get caught in Steve's distortion field, but it was what led him to actually be able to change reality.

he was able to turn charm into a cunning force, to cajole and distort reality with the power of his personality.

And yet when the cup of power neared his lips, he became strangely hesitant, reluctant, perhaps coy.

Shakespeare's Henry V—the story of a willful and immature prince who becomes a passionate but sensitive, callous but sentimental, inspiring but flawed king—begins with the exhortation "O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention.

Eve in Foothills Park, Palo Alto: "She's a pistol and has the strongest

A realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested

Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.

But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone." Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.