Quotes About Power

In 1930, it hit 80 percent. Soon, it was over 90 percent. Only a handful of manufacturers, mainly those running big factories in remote locations, continued to produce their own current. Thanks to Samuel Insull, the age of the private power plant was over. The utility had triumphed.

People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, State of the Union Address, 1944

We're number 1!" and in terms of overall economic and military strength, we are.

Although he may not always recognize his bondage, modern man lives under a tyranny of numbers.

I absolutely think that happiness is a choice. One of the most potent forces in human psychology is the power of habit. Do something, think something, often enough and it will become the only thing you can do or think. Choose to be unhappy and soon that's all you will be. Live in a swamp and you'll grow webbed feet.

The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuing political values with conviction.

Willibald Mattern, a German emigre in Santiago de Chile, had spun a powerful tale of Nazi resurgence. His book, UFOs: Unbekanntes Flugobjekt? Letzte Geheimwaffe des Dritten Reiches (UFOs: Unidentified flying object? Last secret weapon of the Third Reich) (1974), described how thousands of Nazi UFOs will one day fly forth from the South Pole to restore German world power against a scenario of increasing racial chaos and economic catastrophe in a final act of deliverance.

But I'll let you in on a secret, Nonius: it is important for women to break hearts. You men can destroy in so many ways. But for us—for those lucky enough to make men fall in love with us—it is how we make our mark on the world. It is proof we were ever here, the pain we leave behind. And the more worthy the lovers we break, the better." "Shall I take that as a warning?" "Only if you intend to fall in love.

The great offensives of the future would be psychological, and . . . the most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass-persuasion . . . In

Where is the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will?' Anonymous

As if Misfortune made the throne her seat,And none could be unhappy but the great.

Where America was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Sharia was founded on death, slavery, and the pursuit of power.

I'm a bad motherfucker, don't you know--and I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boy's asshole," said Stagger Lee.

In the mirror, mah hair now long, ah looked like a fucken prince. A King. King Euchrid the First. Monarch of Doghead. Don't fuck with the King, brother. Don't fuck with the King. And then ah looked again to Heaven and again ah gave Him thanks.

the pulsing phallus move down his stomach

Politics is a highly tribal business.

After the Saudi plutocrat Khalid bin Mahfouz used English law to attack books that American houses had not even published in England, President Obama signed a law that stated that the US courts should not enforce the orders of English judges against American authors.

Western radicals fall for an equally inane error. Because it is easier to expose abuses of power in democracies, and because Western radicals are most concerned about abuses of power in their own countries, they assume that democratic abuses are the major or only abuses of power worth protesting about.

The faster you strip down the respectful arguments for religious censorship, the more you see the nation, tribe or community splintering, until you are left with one group of individuals with coercive power behind them demanding the right to censor another group of individuals because they disagree with them.

Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed down from above and never telling what seems to him the whole of the truth.

they illustrated an unacknowledged truth about contemporary writing: reporters, editors and artists in Britain, America and most of Europe are not afraid of politicians. They are frightened of Islamists, and do not run cartoons that might offend them. They are frightened of oligarchs and CEOs, and worry about libel and the ability of the wealthy to bend the ear of their proprietors. But they are not frightened about leaking the secrets or criticising the actions of elected governments.

The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.

Boggan got him to translate and heard how hairdressers in Baghdad had to report subversive remarks made by women under the driers. What was a hairdresser to do if her sensibly wary customers steered clear of politics? For how long could she keep telling the secret police that she had nothing to report, without running the risk of the spies marking her down as uncooperative?

Every time you go into your workplace, you leave a democracy and enter a dictatorship.