Quotes About Power

we go through life grumbling about what should be at the expense of accepting what is. Within that bubble of delusion, we grant ourselves an autonomy and superiority we have not earned. We imagine how much better the world would be if we had the power to make the decisions. We don't.

We think we control our environment but in fact it controls us.

If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity.

A lowly clerk expressing an opinion doesn't get people's notice at a company. But when the CEO expresses that opinion, everyone jumps to attention. The higher up you go, the more your suggestions become orders.

Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.

'Money talks' because money is a metaphor, a transfer, and a bridge.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes".

At the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.

One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture.

Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.

You sent your last letter months ago about the poems you could not write, no words to sing when the president swears that God breathes the psalms of armies in his ear, and flags twirl by the millions to fascinate us like dogs at the dinner table.

He was muttering now and I could barely make out his words. "I'm going to die without ever feeling a woman's tits." "Go ahead," I said. It was about time I used the power of my chichis for good and not for evil.

I've created a monster" "No you just released one.

Quiero domar el dolor como si fuera un animal salvaje.

Tirar a la basura es un gesto de poder. El poder prescindir de bienes que otros necesitarían; el poder de saber que otros se ocuparían de desaparecerlo. El poder de poseer es placentero; nunca más que el poder de deshacerse: el poder de no necesitar la posesión. El poder verdadero es desdeñarlo.

Tak jak powtarzaj?cy si? g?ód w Korei Pó?nocnej powinien by? klasycznym przyk?adem tego, do czego zdolna jest dyktatura, kiedy chodzi jej wy??cznie o utrzymanie si? przy w?adzy, tak g?ód w Nigrze w 2005 roku móg?by pokazywa?, do czego zdolny jest rynek, kiedy nic nie kr?puje jego dzia?a?.

Es cierto que nuestra desigualdad empieza cuando aquellos conquistadores se quedan con todo porque son distintos: que su título para mantener el poder era esa diferencia, esa desigualdad.

La desigualdad es esa manera tan absolutamente natural en que una empresaria colombiana, un profesor mexicano, un hacendado salvadoreño dicen María sírvenos el café.

People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures.

Kindness should be immortalized every bit as much as power.

Be careful what you wish for is a very useful adage in all things magical.

Normalize cruelty and cheating and mix it with power. Legitimate power works the best. Stir in as much chaos as possible and before you know it, old norms are gone, and everyone is off kilter.