Quotes About Power

She's a Boleyn and a Howard,I said frankly.Underneath the great name, we 're all bitches on heat.

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.

The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.

Some women attract desire. Others do not.

The law is what powerful men say it shall be.

Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.

I was taught to be queen by Margaret of Anjou, and perhaps I have taught you how to be queen in turn. This is fortune's wheel indeed. With my forefinger I draw a circle in the air, the sign of fortune's wheel. You can go very high and you can sink very low, but you can rarely turn the wheel at your own bidding.

To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.

Yes, Your Grace, I correct her. I am My Lady, the King's Mother, now, and you shall curtsey to me, as low as to a queen of royal blood. This was my destiny: to put my son on the throne of England, and those who laughed at my visions and doubted my vocation will call me My Lady, the King's Mother, and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina: Margaret R.

She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.

Take care with your words, Jacquetta, especially in cursing. Only say the things you mean, make sure you lay your curse on the right man. For be very sure that when you put such words out in the world they can overshoot-like an arrow, a curse can go beyond your target and harm another. A wise woman curses very sparingly.

Everything that highly educated men can do to obscure a simple truth, to make a woman doubt her feelings, to make her own thoughts a muddle, they do to her. They use their learning as a hurdle to herd her one way and then the other and then finally trap her in contradictions of which she can make no sense.

Have you ever wondered, Anne, in your untiring dance of seduction, whether you might not be dancing to Henry's tune instead of your own? I know how clever you are. How enticing. People whisper the word witch whenever you smile at him. But which of you is pale and hollow-eyed from too many scheming, sleepless nights? Which of you is growing more feverish day by day? Which of you is truly bewitched, Anne?

Insane, he says simply. Hopeless. The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son his a devil and should not.

I am a queen she observes. It is natural that men are going to gather round me, hoping for a smile.

We are both people of faith, he said quietly. Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.

But I warn you that a woman who seeks great power and wealth has to pay a great price, Perhaps you will be a great woman like Melusina, or Yolande, or like me; but you will be like all women; uneasy in the world of men.

We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more than men.

Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that govern the world, and then want to own them and keep them secret. Everything they discover,they hug to themselves: they shape knowledge into their own selfish image. What is left to us women but the realms of the unknown?

Getting a woman into power is not the point—it's getting a good woman into power who thinks and cares about what she does.

There was no question now who sat at the right hand of the King. It was the Queen, who walked through the great hall wearing deepest crimson and gold with her head high and a little smile on her lips. She did not flaunt her return to favour. She took it as she had taken her eclipse: as the nature of royal marriage. Now that her star was risen again she walked as proudly as she had ever done when in shadow.

We the daughters of Melusina,' she corrects me. 'Your grandmother was a daughter of the water goddess of the royal house of Burgundy and she never forgot that she was both royal and magical. When I was your age I didn't know whether she could summon up a storm or whatever it was all just luck and pretence to get her own way. But she taught me that there is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman who knows what she wants and walks a straight road towards it.

it is easier to unleash evil than call it back again. Any fool can blow up a wind, but who can know where it will blow or when it will stop?