Quotes About Power

For all the harmless innocence conjured by the word library, the Friedmans knew the truth: a library, properly maintained, could save the world - or burn it down.

It's not quite true that history is written by the winners. It's written by the best publicists on the winning team.

A library, properly maintained, could save the world, or burn it down.

It was anti-Nazi Google.

An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who's the better writer?

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, and every profession's jargon is meant to confuse and exclude those who aren't part of the guild.

He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.

Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

Do you really think you'd win a PR war against a bunch of committed librarians?' He thought about this, but he knew I was right. The libraries were a treasured institution and so central to everyday life that government and commerce rarely did anything that might upset them.Some say they were more powerful than the military, or, if not, they were certainly quieter. As they say: Don't mess with librarians. Only they use a stronger word than 'mess'...

We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired.

Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

Money is a form of alchemy, [...] it turns kind, normal people into greed-mongers, intent only on acquisitiveness.

So you could value your own life, replied the Titan. Before that you were under the gods' thumbs, doing their bidding without caring if you lived or died. When you could see that life was worth living by your fear of the unknown that was death, then you could really make things happen.

Governments might come and go, wars will reshape the Ununited Kingdoms many times. But companies will stay, and flourish. Show me any major even on this planet and I will show you the economic reason behind it. Commerce is all powerful, Miss Strange. Commerce rules our lives.

Now and again. Good residency is about having the power to ask someone to do something, but not necessarily exercising it.

Tangling with the Goliath Corporation generally left you in one of two places: inside a wooden box with a grieving family outside, or inside a wooden box under six foot of soil with family wondering where you were. The former was if they didn't hold a grudge.

is a power lurking in all of us, an emotional energy that can be used to move objects and manipulate matter. But it doesn't follow any physical laws that we can, as yet, understand; it exists only in our hearts and minds.

Show me any major event on this planet, and I will show you the economic reason behind it. Commerce is all powerful, Miss Strange. Commerce rules our lives.

Information can liberate but also imprisonate.

Careful,' he said, 'Information can liberate but also imprisonate....

Words are all very well," I replied coolly, suddenly enjoying the SO-5 woman-of-mystery stuff, "but a nine-millimeter really gets to the root of the problem.

solve all our energy problems by inducing power from the sun's magnetic field via a sixty-thousand-mile tether being towed behind a space station anchored gravitationally at Lagrange One.

The only time we get to fight the powers of darkness is during one of the kingdom's frequent power cuts

Magic is the fifth fundamental force and is even more mysterious than gravity, which is really saying something.