Quotes About Power

Let's face it," my Deep Throat had said to me, "nobody rules the world anymore. The markets rule the world. Maybe that's why your conspiracy theorists make up all those crazy things. Because the truth is so much more frightening. Nobody rules the world. Nobody controls anything.

The powerful, crazy, cruel people were now us. It felt like we were soldiers making war on other people's flaws, and there had suddenly been an escalation in hostilities.

Do not go to that place of horror with elevated spirits, and gay hearts, for death is there! Justice and judgment are there! The power of government, displayed in its most awful form, is there . . . The person who can go and look on death merely to gratify an idle humor is destitute both of humanity and piety.

The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying.

Guy Savelli's role in the War on Terror began when half-a-dozen strangers, within days of one another, contacted him via e-mail and telephone in the winter of 2003. They asked him if he had the power to psychically kill goats. Guy was bewildered. He did not go around publicizing this. Who were these men? How did they know about the goats? He feigned a casual tone of voice and said, 'Sure I can.' Then he phoned Special Forces.

Was he right? It felt like a question that really needed answering because it didn't seem to be crossing any of our minds to wonder whether the person we had just shamed was okay or in ruins. I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.

All over the world, famous people began declaring themselves LeBon fans. Like Mussolini: "I have read all the work of Gustave LeBon and I don't know how many times I have reread The Crowd. It is a capital work to which, to this day, I frequently refer." And Goebbels: "Goebbels thinks that no one since the Frenchman LeBon has understood the mind of the masses as well as he," wrote Goebbels's aide Rudolf Semmler in his wartime diary.

Glenn Beck did not fall into line. He told his listeners that Trump was a "dictator in the making.

Goebbels thinks that no one since the Frenchman LeBon has understood the mind of the masses as well as he," wrote Goebbels's aide Rudolf Semmler in his wartime diary.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about boring, impenetrable people. ...If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

On Twitter we make our own decisions about who deserves obliteration. We form our own consensus, and we aren't being influenced by the criminal justice system or by the media. This makes us formidable.

Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win.

Alex is basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met. He uses his powers to inflame paranoia. He boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda. Alex eschews facts and reason and he definitely should not have political sway.

I remember that Karl Marx line about religion being the opium of the people—his idea that the elites keep the masses subdued with illusory happiness.

Alex is basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met. He uses his powers to inflame paranoia. He boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda. Alex eschews facts and reason and he definitely should not have political sway. The

Stone announced in early April that if delegates at the Republican National Convention had the nerve to switch from Trump to another candidate, "we will disclose [their] hotels and room numbers." Anderson

the Bush family's proclivity for mock human sacrifice. What

Trump might have appointed a less-eerie chief to replace Manafort. But instead he doubled-down, choosing the even eerier Stephen Bannon. Bannon

The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying. THE END

psychopaths made the world go around.

a preponderance of psychopaths at the top, in the corporate and political worlds – a clinical absence of empathy being a benefit in those environments.

I asked Mercedes what sorts of people gathered on 4chan. A lot of them are bored, understimulated, overpersecuted, powerless kids, she replied. They know they can't be anything they want. So they went to the Internet. On the Internet we have power in situations where we would otherwise be powerless.

if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

It is a frightening and huge thought," I said, "that the ninety-nine percent of us wandering around down here are having our lives pushed and pulled around by that psychopathic fraction up there." "It