Quotes About Power

For our first seventy years as a nation, then, slavery made our foreign policy more sympathetic with imperialism than with self-determination

The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class. —KWAME NKRUMAH

The finding that enduring religious belief systems make us more amenable to the commands of authority also is affirmed by the historical realities surrounding many cases of mass killing and genocide.

Journalist Philip Gourevitch reports an interview with a Rwandan lawyer who said: "Conformity is very deep, very developed here. In Rwandan history, everyone obeys authority. People revere power, and there isn't enough education. You take a poor, ignorant population, and give them arms, and say, 'It's yours. Kill.' They'll obey.

Your brain though it is the ruler of your body, has not the power of itself to initiate thought; nor can it, of itself, direct your muscles to perform any definite action. It must receive, first, a suggestion or impulse from without.

1803 -  The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubles the size of the U.S.     The

Isn't the media supposed to keep government responsible?

A gun is more important here than the Koran.

The Buddhists succumbed to the Muslims, the British brought in Christianity, and now the Muslims decide one faction of their religion is better than the other.

Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such a one has the capacity to love. Freely, naively, to say I do.

These are the lessons of being human, being vulnerable, and seeking wholeness with all that is. They are part of the pathway to power. The power lies in the wisdom and understanding of one's role in the Great Mystery, and in honouring every little thing as a teacher. The lessons taught are eternal and forever forthcoming. If the learning is over, so is the magic and the life.

A person can be completely right about something but still not have the right to say it.

All marriages are compromises, even down to the daily choice for dinner. No man is perfect, and no woman is perfect. How well they compromise—and accept and agree to those compromises—determines their level of happiness. As does the equitable share of power. If the balance is off, then the partner with more power must be more considerate. Otherwise, that partner may take advantage of the position.

Words strike the air and the mind, they act on the senses and on the soul.

We find that a high plane of sustained horror is often convenient for reasons of state. — Inspector Kraus (Gestapo)

The power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. - Mr Darcy

She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.

There is exquisite pleasure in subduing an insolent spirit, in making a person pre-determined to dislike, acknowledge one's superiority.

El poder de separar dos personas que se quieren tan intensamente no está al alcance de una persona ajena.

The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

but there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power...

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship! -- How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! -- How much of good or evil must be done by him!

W]here other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

What a blessing it is, when undue influence does not survive the grave!