Quotes About Power

Because widespread participation is so central to popular sovereignty, we can say that the less political participation there is in a society, the weaker the democracy.

What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience so far?

An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.

Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.

If we can't control our conscious responses, what chance do we have against the influences we haven't recognized?

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it....

politicians seemed to be recruited exclusively from the locked wards of psychiatric hospitals

The circumstances of life do not have the power to turn us away from Jesus or to make us love him more—those are the jurisdiction of the heart.

This was Paul's joy in suffering and shame: "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10–11). Notice how this affects your shameful past. It will still hurt at times, but shame will lose its power. The very event that made you an outcast is the one that gives you insight into the mind of Christ.

Since the desires for power and control are in every heart, you don't have to look overseas for lawless brutality. It happens every day between parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives. Where there is injustice, shame will be part of its fallout.

God really does speak in our suffering, and we have good reason to believe that the words he says are good and powerful enough to lighten our pain.

Manman tells papa, you cannot let them kill somebody just because you are afraid. Papa says, oh yes, you can let them kill somebody because you are afraid. They are the law. It is their right.

Sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us" (Danticat 19).

If they come into a house and there is a son and a mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. They make the son sleeps with his mother. If it is a daughter and a father, they do the same thing.

The soldiers can come and do with us what they want. That makes papa feel weak, she says. He gets angry when he feels weak.

Freedom is a passing thing, a man said. Someone can always come and snatch it away.

They are the people of Creation. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything. Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong."— 'Breath, Eyes, Memory

They are the people of Creation. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything. Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong." — 'Breath, Eyes, Memory', Edwidge Danticat

any community or family discussion, those who are the first to introduce concern for empathy feel powerless, and are trying to use the togetherness force of a regressed society to get those whom they perceive to have power to adapt to them.

It is not only their own destinies that each sees as ruled by the other; they even view their own being similarly. Neither seems capable of taking responsibility for personal desires, loves, or hates. Each sees the other as causing his or her own pain. Ironically, they thus each give their partner great power to guilt the other.

If such a state is to be established, it can only be established over our dead bodies.

Somewhere around 2136, various lines of development had collided. What had once been servile Borderline Intelligences had jumped the tracks into genuine sentience. The luminously clever engines of Transgressive intelligence had been much too clever, much too willing to oblige. In an instant, humanity had found itself in possession of tools powerful enough to remake entire worlds, but equally capable of shattering them to dust.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

Having money is a way of being free of money.