Quotes About Power

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of 'wrong' ideas

Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it always is.

They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.

I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.

There is no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.

he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?

His mistake was in seeing her as a young girl. She was already a missile, armed and targeted.

People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they're frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.

God is neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hating. God is Power. God is Change. We must find the rest of what we need within ourselves, in one another, in our Destiny.

As a country, we've given up our birthright for even less than bread and pottage. We've given it up for nothing—although I'm sure some people somewhere are richer now.

how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn't give him power.

We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.

how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn't give him power.

God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But there's hope in understanding the nature of God—not punishing or jealous, but infinitely malleable. There's comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God. There's power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all. But there's no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you. You know that.

We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. Then we go on to create super-people - super-parents, super-kings, and queens, super-cops - to be our gods and to look after us - to stand between us and God. Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba - or like a cancer. Chaos.

I began writing about power because I had so little.

Down on Earth," she said carefully, "there are no people left to draw lines on maps and say which sides of those lines are the right sides. There is no government left. No human government, anyway.

The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free.

I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.

Pochi ritengono che Dio sia un altro modo di chiamare la natura e questa corrisponde a tutto ciò che non capiscono o non controllano.

Power came the way a child came -- with agony.

Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away. You can't sell it for bread and pottage.

But there's no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.

Jarret's supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret's talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.