Quotes About Power

It is, however, with Hillary Clinton that we see the Medusa theme at its starkest and nastiest.

We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for

No one has ever framed a better critique of Roman imperial power than the words put into the mouths of rebels against Rome by Roman writers themselves.

Do those words matter? Of course they do, because they underpin an idiom that acts to remove the authority, the force, even the humour from what women have to say. It is an idiom that effectively repositions women back into the domestic sphere (people 'whinge' over things like the washing up); it trivialises their words, or it 're-privatises' them.

Si no percibimos que las mujeres están totalmente dentro de las estructuras de poder, entonces lo que tenemos que redefinir es el poder, no a las mujeres.

They create desolation and call it peace There

When you are about to hand control of the senate and people of Rome, the armies, the provinces, the allies to one man alone, would you look to the belly of a wife to produce him or search for an heir to supreme power only within the walls of your own home? … If he is to rule over all, he must be chosen from all.

Roman emperors and their advisors never solved the problem of succession. They were defeated in part by biology, in part by lingering uncertainties and disagreements about how inheritance should best operate. Succession always came down to some combination of luck, improvisation, plotting, violence and secret deals. The moment when Roman power was handed on was always the moment when it was most vulnerable.

Trump and Clinton, Perseus and Medusa, and rest my case.

thinking about power as an attribute or even a verb ('to power'), not as a possession.

It means thinking collaboratively, about the power of followers not just of leaders. It means

Nuestro modelo cultural y mental de persona poderosa sigue siendo irrevocablemente masculino

Es habitual pensar que las mujeres que ocupan cargos de poder están derribando barreras o apoderándose de algo a lo que no tienen derecho.

No es fácil hacer encajar a las mujeres en una estructura que, de entrada, está codificada como masculina: lo que hay que hacer es cambiar la estructura.

In Sallust's view, the moral fibre of Roman culture had been destroyed by the city's success and by the wealth, greed and lust for power that had followed its conquest of the Mediterranean and the crushing of all its serious rivals. The crucial moment came eighty-three years before the war against Catiline, when in 146 BCE Roman armies finally destroyed Carthage, Hannibal's home base on the north coast of Africa.

Cicero's eloquence, even if only half understood, still informs the language of modern politics.

Rome had been under the rule of a mad sadist somewhere between a clinical psychopath and a Stalin.

The woman who can whisper in her husband's ear wields more power de facto, or rather is often alleged to, than the colleagues who can only send official requests and memos.

The losers could be as spectacularly cruel as the victors.

To put this the other way round, we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man.

To put it another way, if women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?

He divided the people in this way to ensure that voting power was under the control not of the rabble but of the wealthy, and he saw to it that the greatest number did not have the greatest power – a principle that we should always stand by in politics.

That means thinking about power differently. It means decoupling it from public prestige. It means thinking collaboratively, about the power of followers not just of leaders. It means, above all, thinking about power as an attribute or even a verb ('to power'), not as a possession.

His supporters dubbed him pater patriae, or 'father of the fatherland', one of the most splendid and satisfying titles you could have in a highly patriarchal society.