Quotes About Power

This is the lesson we learned from everything that happened -- there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us. What if it was a challenge of your faith? I said. I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this. What if it was not in His power? I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened. What if it was man and not God that did all of this? I do not believe in man, either.

I am the one who broke the rule. But I am the one who made the rule you couldn't live with.

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn't ban child labor because it's impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it's corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting.

The factory farm industry (in alliance with the pharmaceutical industry) currently has more power than public-health professionals... We give it to them. We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products (and water sold as animal products) - and we do so daily.

Als we op een dag een levensvorm tegenkomen die machtiger en intelligenter is dan wij zelf, en die soort zou ons zien zoals wij vissen zien, wat zouden we dan als argument aanvoeren om niet te worden opgegeten?

Look, I'm not always right. I realize that. But I'm always strong.

We have let the factory farm replace farming for the same reasons our cultures have relegated minorities to being second-class members of society and kept women under the power of men. We treat animals as we do because we want to and can.

He slid out drawers from the cabinet and pulled cards from the drawers, one after another. 'Henry Kissinger: war!''' 'Ornette Coleman: music!' 'Che Guevara: war!' 'Jeff Bezos: money!' 'Philip Guston: art!' 'Mahatma Gandhi: war!' 'But he was a pacifist', I said. 'Right! War!

But it's actually pretty easy to say horrible things: retard, cunt, whatever. In a way, it's even easier because we know exactly how bad the words are. There's nothing scary about them. Part of what makes something really hard to say is the not knowing.

It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it's hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world.

Producing and eating our own food is, historically, much of what made us Americans and not subjects of European powers. While other colonies required massive imports to survive, early American immigrants, thanks to help from Native Americans, were almost entirely self-sustaining.

Not in all ways (of course), but the animals you know have power: they have abilities humans lack, could be dangerous, could bring life, mean things that mean things.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature.

The sum of those no ones was the King of the Universe.

Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.

is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he came to relieve. 

When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office.

The empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but

So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever. 

The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body. At

they have been troubled with the same disease to which the whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and the King for absolute dominion. All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that Kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties

asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?"  I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief.  Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. 

If a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.

Meu amo não podia compreender como toda essa raça de patrícios era tão malevolente e tão terrível.