Quotes About Power

Rather than simply obey political power and implore the spirits to shape your fate in positive ways, the question of wisdom arises, and the empowerment that wisdom offers: act wisely and good things happen, act unwisely and bad things happen.

An SDS radical once wrote, "The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." In other words the cause - whether inner city blacks or women - is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.

Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.

America can win a war against any external foe. Consequently, it is the war at home that will ultimately decide America's fate

The law always limits every power it gives.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

Extensive conquests, when pursued, must be the ruin of every free government

Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard or, may yet be conceived; not is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies as absolute contradiction.

The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army.

Nature is always too strong for principle.

Governments too steady and uniform, as they are seldom free, so are they, in the judgment of some attended with another sensible inconvenience: they abate the active powers of men; depress courage, invention, and genius; and produce a universal lethary in the people.

Do you imagine that I repine at Providence, or curse my creation, because I go out of life, and put a period to a being which, were it to continue, would become ineligible: but I thank providence, both for the good which I have already enjoyed, and for the power with which I am endowed of escaping the ills that threaten me.

I]f subjects must never resist, it follows that every prince, without any effort, policy, or violence, is at once rendered absolute and uncontrollable;

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

It is well known, that every government must come to a period, and that death is unavoidable to the political as well as to the animal body.

In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between authority and liberty; and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest.

Commerce, . . . in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

L]iberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence...

For all their obvious differences, the pope and Mussolini were alike in many ways. Both could have no real friends, for friendship implied equality.

The pope, aware that he had already angered Mussolini with his three telegrams, would do no more.

If the Fascists wanted to have them ring, they would be able to do so only by force. In the end, no one made such an attempt. This was not a time to antagonize the pope.

the Vatican's cooperation.

the moral leadership of the Papacy is conditioned by considerations of opportunism and expedience.