Quotes About Power

Nothing wrong with shooting...as long as the right people get shot.

Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.

When power is up for grabs," Pitt said, "the first casualty is often liberty.

Dangerous things, books." "Look what it did to your brain.

The CCP seemed to be following a dictum attributed to Stalin: 'Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

Controlling people's thoughts obviates the need to control their behaviour and the party has striven constantly to implant patriotic thoughts into the minds of the people.

The combination of close personal relationships, coupled with threats of punishment, is the standard Chinese modus operandi. Beijing hoped to turn Australia into a 'second France', 'a western country that would dare to say "no" to America'.

the forces of nature are unconscious and involuntary; no decisions are made, so to comprehend humanity as a geological force we need to consider its distinctive quality, its volitional element. Humankind is perhaps better described not as a geological force but as a geological power, because we have to consider its ability to make decisions as well as its ability to transform matter. Unlike forces of nature, it is a power that can be withheld as well as exercised.

a common political mistake in the West, the belief that it's always an advantage for ambassadors to have long experience in China. Governments forget that, in the process of getting to know China and some of its powerful players, many succumb to Beijing's subtle influence techniques, so that an ambassador may in practice serve as a conduit for Beijing's messaging back to the Western capital.

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.

Democracy is even more important for what it prevents than for what it provides.

When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.

The answer to the nagging conundrum of how a civilized country like Germany could produce the Holocaust is that Germany ceased to be civilized from the moment Hitler came to power.

Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes. —ALBERT CAMUS, THE REBEL

In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it, it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy. —VIRGINIO ROGNONI,

There is no crueller tyranny," said Montesquieu, "than the one exercised in the shadow of the law, and with the colours of justice.

role of Amidala, Queen of Naboo, the Bad Hair Planet,

the young daughter of Sejanus is taken away to be killed. "What have I done?" Tacitus has her say. "Where are you taking me? I won't do it again.

the men sit around in the square scratching their crotches and dreaming up their next war.

Hitler wouldn't have needed to find someone else. Someone else would have found him. When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I'll have you understand the United States has got the best navy in the world." "Well, . . . why, then, do we need a bigger navy?" "We've got to have a still bigger navy because we're the richest nation on earth.

We have seen the death of Republicanism, of special privilege and national boodle.