Quotes About Power

We won't be friends, you know that yourself. And whether we will be the happiest or the unhappiest of people - is in your power.

Ali ljudi – veliki, odrasli ljudi – nisu prestajali da varaju i mu?e sami sebe i jedan drugoga. Ljudi su držali da nije sveto i važno to proljetno jutro, ni ta krasota svijeta božjega stvorena za dobro svim bi?ima – krasota koja pozivlje za mir, slogu i ljubav – nego je sveto i važno ono što su izmislili oni sami da bi vladali jedan nad drugim

History – the amorphous, unconscious life within the swarm of humanity – exploits every minute in the lives of kings as an instrument for the attainment of its own ends.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of greatness.

Ah! you wish us to be only objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of sensuality we will bend you beneath our yoke,' say the woman.

The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy; it is the negation of Christianity.

The hero of my tale," Tolstoy wrote when he was just twenty-seven, "whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and always will be beautiful— is Truth.

Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

Influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last. Prince

To understand it, to understand the whole of the Master's will is not in my power. But to do His will, that is written down in my conscience, is in my power; that I know for certain. And when I am fulfilling it I have sureness and peace.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized if it is to last.

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? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away.

He meditated on the the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives man a power of making himself, or even as it seemed to him - of making the universe into anything he wishes.

Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge—were all respected.

but are you really so in love? - Oh, it is not that at all. It is not that, it is some kind of power that has seized me and holds me. I do not know what to do.

Where there's law there's injustice,

Kings are the slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes.

Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.

Elena Pavlovna was for him [Tsar Nicholas I] the personification of those empty people who talked not only about science and poetry, but also about governing people, imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. Read more at

knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power.