Quotes About Power

Don't mistake evil for power. That's a bad mistake we all make. Thinking that it takes more strength to break the rules of human decency than to follow them, and therefore if we follow them, we have to be the weaker ones. Bullshit.

There's an electricity in his eyes. Power. Light.

We did not choose our identity, but we were chosen to die by it. For stupid arbitrary reasons instilled by people who refused to see how arbitrary they were. We believe in the golden rule, but we also believe that people fail to live up to it, time and again. Because they fall prey to differences. Because some use the arbitrary very deliberately to keep their own power.

There's such power in that, being someone's focus.

When courts usurp the legislative function and make laws rather than interpret them, when Congress delegates its legislative functions to an unaccountable administrative state, and when presidents issue lawless executive orders, they are abusing their respective constitutional authority.

David Foster Wallace: I always fear that when I really impose my will on something, the universe is gonna punish me.

It's through media that dehumanizing ideas are spread and reproduced. That's why totalitarians out a premium on destroying freedom of the press.

It's through media that dehumanizing ideas are spread and reproduced. That's why totalitarians puts a premium on destroying freedom of the press.

Beware of attempts to destroy the credibility of media outlets that oppose and expose the dehumanizing propaganda of those in power.

Like religion, politics traffics in and plays upon our deepest hopes and fears. And like religion, authoritharian political propaganda works by first making us feel endangered and then offering us a way to escape form our feelings of helplessness.

The joy of war is the joy of the huntm of bringing down game, of ridding the world of a man-eating monster or obliterating a plague.

the common Greek term for "slave," andrapodon, "man-footed creature," was built on the foundation of a common term for cattle, namely, tetrapodon, "four-footed creature.

Certain aspects of sex are troubling—the way it's used as power, or the way it takes the form of perversions that exploit other people...Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way. Being explicit doesn't tap into the mystical aspect of it, either. These things are hard to convey in film because sex is such a mystery.

El hombre descalifica el aspecto de la mujer para disminuir la percepción femenina de su capacidad de atracción, asegurándose un equilibrio de poder más favorable en la relación.

What is Big Government but the Executive's cocaine dream, an activity devoted solely to jockeying for position, in which he may find license for malversation, and may take the company treasury and direct it toward those people who will support his continued incumbency--it is within the law. Its street name is 'earmarks,' but it is theft.

I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he invariably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.

I]n the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

What gives you the right. Yes. To speak to a woman in your private Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You feel yourself empowered Ã¢â'¬Â¦ you say so yourself. To strut. To posture. To "perform." To "Call me in here Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â Eh? You say that higher education is a joke. And treat it as such, you treat it as such. And confess to a taste to play the Patriarch in your class. To grant this. To deny that. To embrace your students.

When all politicians are agreed, someone is getting bought off, for how can the interests of their various constituencies be identical? Only if that identity is the love of money and power.

The power of the dramatist, and of the political flack therefore, resides in the ability to state the problem.

The priests of our new idolatry are the politicians and their nongovernmental like who have discovered the old secret of power gained through fear of the mob.

The abandonment of the Minneapolis police station marked the beginning of the mature phase of an insurrection. As the anarchists solidify their power, it will be remembered as the Fort Sumter of the Revolution. The liberals who bowed them into power will then, sooner or later, be put against the wall. History records nothing to the contrary.

La tiranía de los ignorantes es insuperable y está asegurada por siempre jamás. Dijo Einstein.

when you haven't got the numbers, be vicious. It's called minority politics.