Quotes About Power

The whole nature of war is both stupid and fascinating. It's this big game, except people die. Yet we still keep on playing it because of the big power struggles that exist all over the world. It's really amazing to me that people really do that.

Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.

One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That's why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.

It's hard for women who make a lot of money and make decisions all day long, then they have to come home and be 'Stupid Sally.' Men need respect, and they need to know that they can lead in the relationship, so even if they don't make the most money they need to be able to call the shots.

Stupid is a great force in human affairs.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian ruling style is characteristic of me.

I just serve big and play big. That's my game style.

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in the global fashion industry, the first lady of fashion. She's a politician; I'm a stylist. They are two very different jobs.

If one looks at the map of the world, it's difficult to find Iraq, and one would think it rather easy to subdue such a small country.

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die. It's strange to feel so omniscient.

It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.

I want the subject to be in control. Because they will give me something I couldn't possibly know about them.

Murders with guns are the No. 1 cause of death for African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34. But talking about race in the context of guns would also mean taking on a subject that can't be addressed by passing a law: the family-breakdown issues that lead too many minority children to find social status and power in guns.

We sometimes forget that human invention can also be a subject of human invention: that might seem a modern notion, or a postmodern one, but novelists have taken time - sometimes time out from their realist fixations - to source and satirise the speech and power we rely on.

We all have cultural bias, racial bias. One of the difficult things around this subject matter is to deny that we have places we go to subconsciously, and unless you consciously decide that that's wrong and you've got to do something about it, especially if you're in a position of power, it won't change.

Foucault is one of many who want a new conception of how power and knowledge interact. But he is not looking for a relation between two givens, 'power' and 'knowledge.' As always, he is trying to rethink the entire subject matter, and his 'knowledge' and 'power' are to be something else.

Embedded in 'The New York Times' institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, 'The Times,' by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions.

I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.

In England, the sovereignty resides exclusively in the person or individual who is king. All Englishmen are his subjects. And the highest peer in the realm... has no share in the sovereignty.

In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.