Quotes About Power

The Rise of the US and Germany By the time the United States was strong enough to join the imperialist land grab, very few territories remained. Beyond its small island bases in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, the US did little except relieve Spain of its last colonial post in the Philippines, and to force Japan to open itself to foreign trade.

Germany made every effort to acquire a small empire in the bits left unclaimed in Africa, China and the Pacific, only to lose it all to Britain after the First World War. All this was a signal that, by the late 19th century, being the largest empire no longer guaranteed having the largest economy.

The Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, was one of the first multi-national companies.

The East India Company created the Dutch empire in Indonesia by means of brute force combined with economic pressure.

The rise in trade led to expansionism, and any European power that could afford it would send off ships, hoping to find new territory that "no one" (i.e. no other European) had discovered yet. Controlling land overseas gave these Europeans access to resources that could be exploited, often at the cost of the local inhabitants.

wealth is power" – not because wealth automatically gives its owner political power, but because it gives him or her control of other people's labour.

Socialism is basically a call for greater equality in political power and the distribution of goods. It managed to rally much of the working class behind it.

It led Smith to agree with Hobbes' phrase "wealth is power" – not because wealth automatically gives its owner political power, but because it gives him or her control of other people's labour.

History is a living entity. Not just because of its survivors, and the stories they have to tell, but because of its enduring power to hurt and to heal, to create even as it destroys, to transform familiar old heroes and monuments into dust even as it raises fresh new icons from the ashes of the lost and the forgotten

Everything potent, from human love to atomic energy, is dangerous;

Striker Smith. He's a superhero from the future who travels through

lectured him, "wind power, solar power

And when these advances are made, hydrogen can fill critical energy needs beyond transportation. Hydrogen can also be used to heat and generate electricity for our homes. The future possibilities of this energy source are enormous.

The company," he says, "doesn't need a reason to fire you. The company can do whatever it wants." A week later, on September 2, the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend, Trotsky forwards me an email that Cranium has sent around to everyone in the marketing department. We're

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes

the tame 'God' they've made up in their heads based on what they want God to be like. They keep the real God out of their consciousness. If they did become conscious of him, in all his holiness and power, they would hate him."4 GREG F

I am as yet a storm of zero force. Almost a breath.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.

Empathy is not only a personal feeling; it can be a potent force for political and social change. And thus the suppression or denial of empathy is a deliberate part of a cynical political calculus. Dividing people and stoking animosity can pave a path to power (and in many recent elections, it has). This has been well known since the time of the ancients. But these divisions inevitably come at the expense of the long-term health and welfare of the nation as a whole.

Orwell understood that a government that is beyond the reach of accountability has little incentive to tell the truth. Indeed, its power may arise from the obliteration of objective facts. In the world of 1984, contradictory statements lose all sense of context and we are left with preposterous slogans: "War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength." And yet Orwell asks us, if there is no one with the power to call out a lie as a lie, does it end up ceasing to be a lie?

Gerrymandering isn't just a recent phenomenon, though; the word was coined in 1812 when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry went to such egregious lengths to redraw the state senate districts in his party's favor that one district took on the shape of a salamander.

The pendulum of our great nation seems to have swung toward conceit and unsteadiness once again, but it is in our power to wrest it back. Our government is there to serve us, not the other way around.

In 1984, Orwell could only imagine a tyrannical central government having the power to systematically undermine objective truth. Today we see that process happening organically through millions of social media "shares.