Quotes About Power

love makes us both strong and weak at the same time. I

Stalin had always found Gorky unreliable; he had crossed swords with him in 1917, calling his protests "geese cackling in intellectual marshes

Chekisty with smoking revolvers ran back and cocked the triggers immediately. The legs of those shot jerked in convulsions. . . . Two men in grey greatcoats nimbly put nooses round the necks of the corpses, dragged them off to a dark niche in the cellar. Two others with spades dug at the earth, directing steaming rivulets of blood. Solomin, his revolver in his belt, sorted out the linen of those shot. He carefully made separate

Than the crunch of broken lives and bones. This is why when our eyes are languid And passion begins to seethe stormily in the breast, I want to write on your sentence One unquavering thing: "Up against a wall! Shoot!" 23

They read denunciations, certificates, cases. They hurriedly signed sentences. They yawned. They drank wine. [ . . . ] At night they chased barefooted, naked people Over ice-covered stones Against a northeast wind Into wastelands outside town. [ . . . ] They threw them, not all killed yet, into a pit. They hurriedly covered them with earth.

A clever writer on political questions [Machiavelli] rightly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a political goal to go for a series of atrocities, then they must be carried out in the most energetic way and in the shortest time, for the popular masses will not endure prolonged application of atrocities. . . .

Any measures whatsoever must be officially announced only by Comrade Kalinin—never under any circumstances may Comrade Trotsky make any public statements in print or any other way.

bad feelings to you personally or the GPU as an institution....

And spiteful in his failure, he immediately started a revolution for all, so that nobody escaped punishment. And our fathers followed him to Golgothas with banners and songs. . . . In Russia you mustn't wake anybody. Naum Korzhavin I have tried, rather than write a new biography of Stalin or another his-tory of the USSR, to examine Stalin's path to total power and the means—and the men—which enabled him to hold on to it.

The Bolsheviks attacked the Russian state not because it was oppressive but because it was weak.

Unite to win. Divide to conquer.

The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you're dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can't do without.

Socialism is not about the environment. It's not about justice. It's not about virtue. Socialism is about only one thing. It's called power for the ruling class. That's what it is.

I'm going to build a great, big, and beautiful wall. I'm going to make Rick Riordan pay for it. Those stupid dorki-gods will pay.

Citizen Kane was really about accumulation, and at the end of the accumulation, you see what happens, and it's not necessarily all positive. In real life, I believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people. It's a protective mechanism. You have your guard up much more so than you would if you didn't have wealth.

I've known Jeff [Epstein] for 15 years. Terrific guy, He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years?

Nor has the extent of your prosperity produced any change in you, except that it has given you the power of doing good to the utmost of your wishes. And whilst all these circumstances increase the veneration which other persons feel for you, with respect to myself, they have made me so bold, as to wish to become more familiar.

what in God's name was the thrust of that vast expanse of displaced water doing to those stones and to the centuries-old binding that kept them in place? Suddenly the air was unbreathable as a capricious gust blew the ship's exhaust down on them for a few seconds.

Cicero's Against Verres and its denunciation of a corrupt official, Brunetti's

I've always been afraid of people in possession of what they believe is the truth. They'll do anything to see that the facts are changed and whipped into shape to agree with it.

Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn't matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you're aristocrats.

logic, that's the appeal to fear. Make people afraid of something and you can make them do what you want.

It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.