Quotes About Power

The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.

Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.

We know that the doctrine of equality leads by steps not only logical, but almost mechanical, to sacrifice the principle of liberty to the principle of quantity; that, being unable to abdicate responsibility and power, it attacks genuine representation, and, as there is no limit where there is no control, invades, sooner or later, both property and religion.

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.

Nothing is more untrue than the famous saying of an ancient historian, that power is retained by the same arts by which it is acquired; untrue at least for men, though truer in the case of nations.

Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.

Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun.

It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.

There is a grain of truth in the notion that the force that creates, and sustains in a crisis, is not quite the same that is wanted in time of prose to continue and to preserve; or in other words, that creative power makes a great consumptive of party resources.

From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

The Liberal party is held together, not by forces within, but by a force above it. It consists, like the being that declined a chair, of two wings and a head.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangstersget control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The power of Thought,--the magic of the Mind!

Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, Not practise!

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation - with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

Oh too convincing - dangerously dear - In woman's eye the unanswerable tear

Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

Sweet is revenge - especially to women.

The power of thought is the magic of the mind.

There rose no day there rolled no hour Of pleasure unembittered; And not a trapping decked my Power That galled not while it glittered.