Quotes About Power

Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.

While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of unwise laws from the statute books appeal lies not to the courts but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.

Everyone that is not a noble," he lamented, "is a slave.

And to Virginia governor Edmund Randolph, who also favored a bill of rights, he explained, "The human race is too apt to rush from one extreme to another.… For now, the cry is power; give Congress power, without reflecting that every free nation that hath ever existed has lost its liberty by the same rash impatience and want of necessary caution.

history informs us that the passage of dethroned monarchs is short from prison to the grave."18

It is not the spirit of wealth, of learning, or of culture that can make the church of value, or a power for good in the world, but the spirit of Christ only.

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservative to anarchist—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Orwell, of course: Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservative to anarchist—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

When your energy is tied up in worrying and regretting, you give up your vitality and the power to make your dreams come true. Life will always have its share of difficulties, in the midst of which you can choose to be satisfied, loving and healthy.

Fighting newspaper editors for the last word was a losing proposition.

Indeed, in 1794, George Washington had not only authorized sending national troops into battle against Pennsylvanians resisting the whiskey tax, he had taken to the field to lead the forces himself. Later, Andrew Jackson had acted boldly to crush South Carolina's attempt to nullify the 1832 tariff.

Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.

Public sentiment is everything, said Lincoln. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

At times, said the founder of the Chicago Tribune, Lincoln seemed to reach into the clouds and take out the thunderbolts.

I am against government by crony.

We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few, and war is the ultimate sanction of that exploitation.

The Labor government of 1945, which was put in power by popular vote and did what the people wanted, was nearer the Marxist idea than any of the governments thrown up by revolution, French, Russian or other.

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lies. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

The reality of living was never greater than when you held death clutched tightly in your hands.

Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God's goodness.

Let me suggest that at the core of Jewish God-talk is the unshakable conviction that God's most dominant attribute is His commitment to justice rather than power. Earthly kings lust for power, for total control, and are prepared to sacrifice justice, to hurt innocent people, to hold on to power. But as far as the God of Israel is concerned, in a conflict between justice and power, justice will prevail. God will not do wrong. That more than anything gives Job reason to hope. A