Quotes About Power

The whole of the Universe is run by God, which is one vast Imagination, struggling against the almost irresistible brute forces of the cosmos.

Bright, dreadful flashes of lightning rent the darkness and Kali's reply was drowned by a peal of thunder which shook heaven and the wilderness. Simultaneously a whirlwind broke out, tugged the boughs of the tree swept away in the twinkling of an eye the camp-fire, seized the embers, still burning under the ashes, and carried them with sheaves of sparks into the jungle.

Numai moartea e o for?? la fel de absolut?, dar în lupta de veacuri dintre aceste dou? puteri, dragostea este cea care ia moartea de gât, îi pune genunchiul în piept, o bate ziua È™i noaptea, o învinge în fiecare prim?var?, o urm?reÈ™te pas cu pas È™i-n fiecare groap? pe care aceasta o sap?, dragostea arunc? s?mânÈ›a unei vieÈ›i noi.

Qué sociedad! -A tal sociedad, tal César.[...]

What a strange power there is in woman! She comes in contact with a genius without portfolio, an exceptionally useless implement like me, and then, without any preaching on her part, he feels himself in duty bound to do all sorts of things he never dreamed of doing before. The

Herd!" repeated Petronius, with contempt; "a people worthy of Cæsar!" And he began to think that a society resting on superior force, on cruelty of which even barbarians had no conception, on crimes and mad profligacy, could not endure. Rome ruled the world, but was also its ulcer.

Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional duties to the honor of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher ranks than themselves.

What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit.

there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on any one of them individually.

I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper...there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people...but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.

The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them.

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?

It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals...

God gave the day, God gave the strength.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.

We are conscious of the force of man's life, and we call it freedom

Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.

Luxury cannot be obtained other than by enslaving other people.

Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old man, cannot remain tranquil in their presence. Watch a popular festival, or our receptions or ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence there. You will see it in her triumphant smiles.