Quotes About Power

An alliance with terrible people." "Really nice people don't usually accrue power.

Pope was aware there were other ways to get more diplomatic respect than bigger guns, of course. But while other diplomatic maneuvers sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, ultimately a big damn gun always commanded respect.

A newspaper publisher. In the late 1800s the United States and Spain were warming up for a war over Cuba, and Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to make pictures of the event. When the illustrator got there, he sent a telegram to Hearst saying that as far as he could see, there was no war coming and that he was going home. Hearst sent back that he should stay and said, 'You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war.' And he did.

Fear enters the room and sits down in a chair and with a polite smile asks to open negotiations.

I lift things.

I am not Death. I am killing; I am the verb, I am the action, I am the performance.

Hello, Anon-a-Writer! In one hand I have a restraining order, and in the other I have a Taser. Which would you like to meet first?

How was it for you?" "Mostly okay?" "Well, good," Kiva said, and patted Fundapellonan's shoulder. "Because you're about to get fucked by me again, this time in front of the emperox.

Which means I will have failed because of you. I may be low on the diplomatic totem pole, but I am sufficiently high enough on it that when I push you, you will die from the fall." She looked over to Schmidt. "And he'll kill you when he lands.

They are still in rebellion. You don't win a rebellion by default.

No one wants the Interdependency to end. Including the House of Wu. There's too much money and power at stake," Attavio VI said. "And the survival of humanity doesn't matter?" Cardenia asked, incredulously. "Not if it means the end of the Interdependency.

I'm a terrific boss, and I'll brutally sabotage the career of any underling who says different.

You believe someone is leveraging all this to work against me." "You are the emperox, ma'am. Someone is always working against you. It's in the job description.

When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.

I have some people here who would very much like to do that to me," Grayland said. "Overthrow me, I mean." "I would recommend against it," Chenevert advised. "Not a great career move?" "It frees up your schedule, which is honestly fantastic. But the people who removed you then usually want to kill you too. And that's inconvenient.

No Gods Or Kings. Only Man. -Andrew Ryan

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. —Andrew Ryan

Almost anyone could be Fascist under the right circumstances. If they get scared enough. It's because, you see, most people live their lives like sleepwalkers. They're not really awake, though they think they are. And sleepwalkers are easily lead. That's why we have to fight so hard. Because it never quite goes away.

increasing blasé acceptance of the USA as a nation under siege from within, manning the barricades with the growing legions of hired cops, gypsy cops, rent-a-cops, uniformed thugs insulating the rich from the poor?

the so-called free world was a dictatorship that used media and conformist conditioning to enforce its dominion.

What is required to get a group of people to pray? They must see how big God is and how little they are. This will produce an awareness of their need. They will be deeply troubled. Yet they must also see that God is truly willing to hear the prayers of people like them. If either is missing, they will not approach the throne of grace. If both are believed, they will pray no matter how inconvenient the time. You will not be able to stop them.

Literacy is vital to democracy. For if the governed can neither understand their leaders nor distinguish truth from lies, then a democracy descends into oligarchy, a government by and for the elite few.

He had said, I am a man, and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.