Quotes About Power

If sufficiently developed and organized, public sentiment, as manifested in Congress, can prevail over presidential intransigence. Lincoln

Dignified theatricality is an essential element of power.

An interest willing to suppress speech was an interest willing to put its own power ahead of democracy.

the party endorsed the "speedy construction" of the transcontinental railroad and a "liberal and just" policy of immigration given that "foreign immigration…has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation.

The presidency which under Lincoln had been a tool of transformation had become, under Johnson, a refuge from modernity.

Now as then, the tradition of faith that drove Lewis is too often used not to pursue justice but to amass power. Now as then, many white Americans profess to believe the gospel. And now as then, too many are content to accede to religious teachings more in principle than in practice. My aim is to show how John Lewis did both—and if he did both, then perhaps more of us can, too.

In a democracy, the pursuit of power for power's sake, devoid of devotion to equal justice and fair play, is tempting but destructive

Lincoln asked. "Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!…I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us….If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

It would not take much to have the throats of every Abolitionist cut. —Preston Brooks of South Carolina, 1856 Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities….He cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good evil. —Frederick Douglass, on the Dred Scott decision, 1857 I clearly see, as I think, a powerful plot to make slavery universal and perpetual in this nation. —Abraham Lincoln, 1858

constitutional amendment. It backed

Resolved Therefore that the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony and that every attempt to vest such power in any other person or persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as AMERICAN FREEDOM.50 Men

philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

The opposition continued to fear Jackson's mysterious power over so many people. "His administration is absolutely odious, and yet there is an adherence to the man," John Sergeant, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, wrote to Clay. "It remains to be seen whether this will not yield to the conviction that his continuance must be destructive of everything that is worthy to be cherished.

Well, what the hell is the presidency for?" he asked, if not to do the big things lesser men might not?

Near the end of Donald Trump's first year in power, for instance, The New York Times reported that, before taking office, he had "told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.

the fact that we have arrived at a place in the life of the nation where a grand wizard of the KKK can claim, all too plausibly, that he is at one with the will of the president of the United States seems an unprecedented moment.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.47 This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

But where, say some, is the king of America?" Paine wrote. "I'll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Great Britain….For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other.

The magnitude of the job dwarfs every man who aspires to it," Johnson recalled in his memoirs. "Every man who occupies the position has to strain to the utmost of his ability to fill it.

what mattered was what you did once in power, not what you said in order to get there.

He exploited the privileges of power and prominence without regard to its responsibilities; to him politics was not about the substantive but the sensational

To Dennis, "undoubtedly the easiest way to unite and animate large numbers in political association for action is to exploit the dynamic forces of hatred and fear.