Quotes About Power

A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people's hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further—if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person—then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

Rather than pushing harder to overcome resistance to change, artful leaders discern the source of the resistance. They focus directly on the implicit norms and power relationships within which the norms are embedded.

Just as the Boeing 247's engineers had to downsize their engine because it lacked wing flaps, systems thinking without the discipline of mental models loses much of its power. The two disciplines go naturally together because one focuses on exposing hidden assumptions and the other focuses on how to restructure assumptions to reveal causes of significant problems.

In my view the greatest evil in the world today is ever-increasing power and wealth in ever-fewer hands," says Visa founder Dee Hock.

Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.

knowing freedom was dangerous.

Sometimes the women much resent the men who call for war and have been known to rush upon them and beat them severely about the head and shoulders.

After being rationed to a single ball, a whole box of them gave me a delightful feeling of sudden wealth. French politicians must have a similar sensation when elected to high office and permitted to dip into the chateaux and limousines and government-issue caviar. No wonder they cling to power long after they should be tucked away in an old folks' home. I'd do the same.

One can see [...] that the so-called governing powers are cardboard characters that mask the true ruling factors of our culture. Of course, those who manipulate the nation are not stupid. Rulers throughout history are only as powerful as the people who support them allow them to be.

David Frost: It's all right. He wants me to do this. To finish him off. John Birt: What? David Frost: He wants the wilderness.

Jim Reston: Walking through the crowds of air-kissing politicians, actors and high fliers, it was tough to tell where the politicians stopped and the showbiz started. Maybe, in the end, there is no difference.

This Republican takeback of Capitol Hill would immediately

You could stand there two hours; you could stand there five minutes. The Pacific didn't give a hoot about time. It would eat a year for breakfast. Is that why they'd always been so drawn to it? Is that why, still, they came and stood at the edge, day after day? Its blessed indifference? [Pacific]

Maybe the kids will always be stronger. It's us—the impostors masquerading as protectors—who are unimaginably weak. For

A true Christian militant attacks systems of oppression and fights for a better world even though that new world might negatively affect their own position of power.

and dust, the armored spearhead

The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign governments are trying to

Even if nothing illegal occurred, one has to wonder about the political judgment involved. Surely the mere appearance of selling American power and influence to foreign interests should be enough to cause a former US president—and a possible future one—to steer well clear of such potentially

The reality is that most of what happens in American politics is transactional. People look for ways to influence those in power by throwing money in their direction.

Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and a lot more to do with accessing money and favors. As we will see, bills and regulations are often introduced not to effect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for those money and favors.

Machiavelli declared that it was better to be feared than loved as a leader, but you did not want to be hated. Hatred led to conspiracy. And conspiracy, he warned, could bring down governments.

Complexity is a useful and lucrative method of legal extortion for politicians

In Washington, it is far more important to be feared than loved.

According to Waggoner, the trouble is that complicated laws enrich those who make the laws while making the rest of society poorer.