Quotes About Power

That the social life of human beings is subject to definite limitations; that it is governed by a set of laws that are comparable with those of Nature; these are notions that are unknown to the etatist. For the etatist, everything is a question of Macht - power, force, might. And his conception of Macht is crudely materialistic.

For the etatist, money is a creature of the State, and the esteem in which money is held is the economic expression of the respect or prestige enjoyed by the State. The more powerful and the richer the State, the better its money. Thus, during the War, it was asserted that 'the monetary standard of the victors' would ultimately be the best money. Yet victory and defeat on the battlefield can exercise only an indirect influence on the value of money.

Unfortunately, purges are not something which happen just because men are imperfect. Purges are the necessary consequences of the philosophical foundation of Marxian socialism. If you cannot discuss philosophical differences of opinion in the same way you discuss other problems, you must find another solution—through violence and power. This refers not only to dissent concerning policies, economic problems, sociology, law, and so on. It refers also to problems of the natural sciences.

The central element in the economic problem of money is the objective exchange-value of money, popularly called its purchasing power.

Nikolai Bukharin [1888–1938], a Communist author who lived in a Communist country, wrote a pamphlet in 19175, in which he said, we asked for freedom of the press, thought, and civil liberties in the past because we were in the opposition and needed these liberties to conquer. Now that we have conquered, there is no longer any need for such civil liberties.

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.

The alternative to the rule of law is the rule of despots.

No opposition party wants to assign so much power to another party. In drafting socialist programs, everybody assumes tacitly that he himself will be the planner or the dictator, or that the planner or dictator will be intellectually completely dependent on him and that the planner or dictator will be his handyman.

Lessing has said that Collectivism is nothing less than 'the cloak of tyranny'.

Chi è incapace di servire il prossimo, vuole dominarlo.

One thing, however, must be made clear; even now the State has not the power of directly making anything into money, that is to say into a common medium of exchange. Even nowadays, it is only the practice of the individuals who take part in business that can make a commodity into a medium of exchange.

Chi sostiene un sistema schiavistico non si ferma mai a riflettere su come egli stesso potrebbe diventarne vittima.

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.

Librarians were somewhat on a par with God-who else could be bothered with, and better yet, know the answers to so many different types of questions? Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.

You know that the Greeks used to believe that people were made up of two heads and two bodies. But Zeus was afraid of how powerful that could be, so he split people in two. That way, instead of causing trouble for him, they spent the rest of their lives trying to find their other half.

in nineteen minutes you can norder a pizza and have it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk a mile. You can sew a hem. In nineteen minutes you can get revenge.

We don't know what reality is," Rayanne says. "We just pretend we do, because it makes us feel like we're in control.

Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.

And he wonders if maybe Nina is right; if a superhero is nothing but an ordinary person who believes that she cannot fail.

Oh, darling, that's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person.