Quotes About Power

For only he who is alive is in the right.

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.

Der moralische Einfluß nimmt da seinen Anfang, wo die Demütigung beginnt, ja er ist nichts anderes, als diese Demütigung selbst, die Brechung und Beugung des Mutes zur Demut herab.

He who has might has—right; if you have not the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain?

Entitled or unentitled — that does not concern me, if I am only powerful, I am of myself empowered, and need no other empowering and entitling.

The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless — desecration. Nothing is holy to him! It would be foolish to assert there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of — every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it out friend and be humble toward it.

What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing

Language or "the word" tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas.

Devlet, eme?in köleli?i üzerine oturur. Emek, özgür oldu?u anda devlet çöker.

Wer die Gewalt hat, der hat – Recht; habt Ihr jene nicht, so habt Ihr auch dieses nicht. Ist diese Weisheit so schwer zu erlangen? Seht doch die Gewaltigen und ihr Tun an!

Political freedom means this: that the polis, the state, is free; religious freedom this: that religion is free, just as freedom of conscience indicates that conscience is free; thus, it does not that I am free from state, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my freedom, but the freedom of a power that rules and vanquishes me; it means that one of my oppressors, like state, religion, conscience, is free.

Everything is a spook

He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship.

Apart from any other basis which might justify a superiority, education, as a power, raised him who possessed it over the weak, who lacked it, and the educated man counted in his circle, however large or small it was, as the mighty, the powerful, the imposing one: for he was an authority.

The republic is nothing whatever but—absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty.

Seit je hat Aufklärung im umfassendsten Sinn fortschreitenden Denkens das Ziel verfolgt, von den Menschen die Furcht zu nehmen und sie als Herren einzusetzen. Aber die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils. Das Programm der Aufklärung war die Entzauberung der Welt.

Today's capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell in which he is obliged to live. It forces on the individual, to the extent that he is caught up in the relationships of the "market," the norms of its economic activity.

Material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.

What kind of a man must one be if he is allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?

Política como vocación). Los funcionarios con un alto sentido ético, tales como los que desgraciadamente han ocupado entre nosotros una y otra vez cargos directivos, son precisamente malos políticos, irresponsables en sentido político y por tanto desde este punto de vista, éticamente detestables.

Quien busca la salvación de su alma y la de los demás que no la busque por el camino de la política, cuyas tareas, que son muy otras, solo pueden ser cumplidas mediante la fuerza. El genio o demonio de la política vive en tensión interna con el dios del amor, incluido el dios cristiano en su configuración eclesiástica, y esta tensión puede convertirse en todo momento en un conflicto sin solución.

Cada persona tiene que conocer cuál es el dios o el demonio que maneja los hilos de su vida.

Für die Politik ist das entscheidende Mittel: die Gewaltsamkeit.

The numerous gods of yore, divested of their magic and hence assuming the shape of impersonal forces, arise from their graves, strive for power over our lives, and resume their eternal struggle among themselves.