Quotes About Power

In the sense of worldly advantage, it no longer signified whether people thought of him as having been an authentic man of virtue. There was no more political power or influence to be gained from maintaining that identity. But to him it still mattered.

The Jacobin leaders were beset on many sides by enemies, both open and covert. But in the end the most dangerous and unforgiving enemies they faced were themselves. In choosing terror, they chose a path that led to self-destruction.

Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

I think what's really amazing is that given the scale of the web and getting the compute power we have today, we're starting to see things that appear intelligent but actually aren't semantically intelligent.

Innocence and guilt are legal concepts which have little relevance to the political world,

That Hitler had surrounded himself with thugs and murderers had cast a darker shadow on the years that followed. But

I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.

A child's hand in yours -- what tenderness and power it arouses. You are instantly the very touchstone of wisdom and strength.

He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He marvelled, padding on bare feet past the slat-fence of the clearing, that the moon was so strong that when it lay the other side of the earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. The moon was far away, unseen, and it had power to move them.

Words began fights and words ended them.

You kin tame arything, son, excusin' the human tongue.

Mother Wolf, you called yourself. What does a wolf teach her pups but teeth and hunger? You didn't make me in your image. You made me into something worse. I have to know what that is.

Master Ren: "Inquisitrix! Be warned: I am commander Ren Mormorian, apprentice nekomancer to the great and ancient two-faced Zorian of Whiteclaw House! I have raised the ancient dead! I have fought the wraithmen of the Forsaken Forests! Cross me at your own peril! You can't blame a cat for trying. Flee!

I have hunted for less. I have killed for less. But never with as much pleasure.

Power is transient. Power can flow from one person to another. The most powerful person in a room isn't the wealthiest or the one with the most connections. It's the person who believes the strongest, the one who has the most confidence. And, sometimes, it's the person who can make everyone else feel like less of themselves.

Moscow was, as some said, the most beautiful mistress a man could ever want, but never cross her: like any good woman, she might just cut off your balls for the hell of it.

Any of those priests even sniff at you wrong, you fuck them over until they see Jesus.

There's never honor where there's power.

All things are possible to him that believeth.

Similarly, although patterns of centralized national authority differed radically among the European nations, the general trend in each of these areas was toward greater concentration of political power pointing toward the modern nation-state.

Rather, it is that Europe's economic recovery created new centers of financial power, new situations for potential friction, and new opportunities for fiscal resentment.

Julius's successor, Leo X (1513–21), was more pious than his predecessors but no less convinced that the measure of papal greatness was an increase in papal lands and a sponsorship of the arts.

But the depth of the crisis is also suggested by the multitude of reforming voices, societies, and movements that arose within the Catholic Church during the same period that Protestants began to move away from the church. Such movements are the concern of our next chapter, but it is important to note them now in order to indicate the magnitude of crisis brought about by the failure of Catholic leadership to expend as much energy in the care of souls as in the pursuit of power.