Quotes About Power

the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.

As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do.

Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculating" and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.

Police are bureaucrats with weapons.

money has no essence. It's not "really" anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political conten­tion.

Efficiency' has come to mean vesting more and more power to managers, supervisors, and presumed 'efficiency experts,' so that actual producers have almost zero autonomy.

Liberty grew because it served the interests of power. This apparent paradox was the core of Western identity.

Wonderful, because life gained the ability to harvest sunlight for energy. What a fantastic breakthrough! Earth's biosphere learned to plug into the best power source the universe has to offer, tapping a nearby star to manufacture food from light.

I saw for real that he wasn't worth anything without her, and that all his power in life came from her being with him. He turned into half a human in that one instant.

Il suffisait parfois d'un petit marchandage de rien du tout pour venir à bout des grandes choses - le temps, le destin, Dieu…

Look on the bright side. Even though America's Wokey-Woke police cannot issue arrest warrants for real or imagined transgressors from the pages of history, they still have the New York Times willing to do a little front-page strangling on their behalf.

Roll-over Carthage and Babylon! With the auspicious embarrassment that only great nations can achieve, America's twenty-first century that began with that Holy Trinity of turdsqueak popcorn farts; George W. Bush, Barack Hussein Obama and Donald Trump, is now being awarded an involuntary colonoscopy without an anesthesia by Comatose Joe Biden and his assistant, Willie Brown's second or third string wifey, Camilla Harris.

None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.

Without beginning, without end, Without past, without future. A halo of light surrounds the world of law. We forget one another, quiet and pure, altogether powerful and empty. The emptiness is irradiated by the light of the heart and of heaven. The water of the sea is smooth and mirrors The moon in its surface. The clouds disappear in blue space; the mountains shine clear. Consciousness reverts to contemplation; The moon-disk rests alone.31

The curse of the law" is not the curse of having to live within the framework of Torah for the Torah itself is good. Nor is it the curse of being required to obey the Torah but lacking the power to do so

Shame had an emotional power which it has lost today.

In terms of class, for example, the dominant elite in one section tended to ally itself with the proletariat in the other.

Not a single ex-servant or son of a servant became a member of Virginia's House of Burgesses during the late seventeenth century.

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know.

he [Robert Lovett] knew that those whose names were always in print, who were always on the radio and television, were there precisely because they did not have power, that those who did hold or had access to power tried to keep out of sight. Halberstam, David; John McCain (2002-03-26). The Best and the Brightest (Modern Library) (Kindle Locations 448-449). Modern Library. Kindle Edition.

Anybody is a damn fool if he actually seeks to be President," he told friends. "You give up four of the very best years of your life. Lord knows it's a sacrifice. Some people think there is a lot of power and glory attached to the job. On the contrary the very workings of a democratic system see to it that the job has very little power.

for one measure of economic power was the ownership of sports teams—the Tigers had been owned by the Briggses, an old manufacturing family for whom the baseball park had been named, and the football team by William Clay Ford, Henry's brother—and in the early eighties the two newest owners, of the Tigers and the hockey Redwings, were pizza franchisers.

One percent of the population ruled—and they were all grafters—while the other ninety-nine percent live under the worst kind of feudalism.