Quotes About Power

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad.

The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that those taking the largest direct share in the event take on themselves the least responsibility and vice versa

Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it—equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press—and only for that reason did he obtain power.

Every monarch in the world, except the Emperor of China, wears a military uniform, and bestows the greatest rewards on the man who kills the greatest number of his fellow-creatures.

What is bad? What is Good? What should one love, what hate? Why live and what am I? What is life, what is death? What power rules over everything?

And everybody was undermining everybody else mainly over the course of the war, which all these men thought they were in control of, though in practice the war ignored them and went its own inevitable way. In

Weyrother evidently felt himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead to.

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

Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.

La energía se basa en el amor y no es posible adquirir amor a la fuerza.

I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples1—as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him—he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the swarm-life—that is to say for history—whatever had to be performed.

There was the sound of the snapping of wood in the garden, and all was perfect stillness again. The lungs seemed breathing in, not air, but a sort of ever-youthful power and joy.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head of the government may be.

In the corporal's changed face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless.

every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a single man

But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men,

The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and an absurdity.

Quos vult perdere dementat.

Todo se hacía con las manos limpias, con camisas planchadas, con palabras francesas y, sobre todo, en la más alta sociedad, es decir, con la aquiescencia de las personas más influyentes.

Dieu, quelle virulente sortie!

wealth, power, and life—all that men so painstakingly acquire and guard—if it has any worth has so only by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.

That's just the point, my dear fellow, that cases may arise when the Government does not fulfill the will of its citizens and then Society announces its own will.

Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence, always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence, which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the duration and strength of the government.