Quotes About Power

These two halves of God, the Pope and the emperor.

The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God.

Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and especially on their destinies, as what they do.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

They have over-cultivated national rhetoric [. . .] they will have to undertake something.

Woorden kunnen nietige stukjes arsenicum zijn: ze worden ongemerkt ingeslikt en lijken geen uitwerking te hebben, maar na enige tijd is de gifwerking er toch.

I am not a dictator, I have only simplified democracy.

Books are all the dreams we would most like to have and like dreams they have the power to change consciousness.

In England and France, they executed their kings some centuries ago, but we were late with ours.

Up to the abdication of the last Tsar one of the principal articles in the Fundamental Laws stated, simply, 'His Majesty is an absolute monarch who is not obliged to answer for his actions to anyone in the world but has the power and the authority to govern his states and lands as a Christian sovereign, in accord with his desire and goodwill.

There are plenty of Marxist-Leninist textbooks about taking power; but there are none about giving it up.

Overnight the Revolution had brought political freedoms never before known in Russia – and hardly ever since.

The so-called dictatorship of the proletariat is really the dictatorship over the proletariat by the party and even by individual persons.

To steal from a rich man has always been a greater crime than to kill a poor man.

We have conquered everything, and everything has slipped out of our grasp.

The revolution died a self-inflicted death in 1918 with the establishment of the Cheka.

Sometimes all I have are words and to write them means they are no longer prayers but are now animals. Other people can hunt them.

A pioneering figure in the past, the future was the president of the present. You are sitting. But the future wants your chair. She is demanding.

Mark Anthony had established ascendance the day before by springing claws like flick knives and hissing like a maddened cobra. Dirk had rolled on his back and ratified the peace treaty before the ink was dry, like a dog of sense.

I found bossing other people about such a delightful novelty that I had to remind myself of Lord Acton's famous axiom about its tendency to corrupt.

Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone listened to Zeus.

In dealing with those who share his bed, the enlightened ruler may enjoy their beauty but should not listen to their special pleas.

Darling, the legs aren't so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.