Quotes About Power

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternative service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else's power is a conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it, or can assume that it is part of the natural order of things, and invent or adopt ideas which justify they possession of it.

Narcissistic Superstars seldom become beloved leaders. The reason is that they don't understand their followers well enough to inspire trust and loyalty. In the world of Superstars, other people come in two distinct types: those who have something the vampires want, and those who are beneath notice. Superstars can seldom resist the temptation to point out to little people just how little they are.

Most Narcissistic vampires have achievements to back up their high opinion of themselves. Unlike other vampire types who are just as happy to pretend, Narcissists are quite willing to work hard to glorify themselves. In their careers, these vampires are usually focused and goal-directed. Many are workaholics, but unlike Histrionic people pleasers who'll work themselves half to death for approval and love, Narcissists take on only those tasks that pay off in money, fame, or power.

Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.

The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.

All the power [the State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power.

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.

The competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words, giving itself a monopoly.

Passing from the tyranny of Charles I to the tyranny of Cromwell is like taking a turn in a revolving door; the exertion merely puts you back where you started. If every jobholder in Washington were driven into the Potomac tonight, their places would be taken tomorrow by others precisely like them.

State power has an unbroken record of inability to do anything efficiently, economically, disinterestedly or honestly; yet when the slightest dissatisfaction arises over any exercise of social power, the aid of the agent least qualified to give aid is immediately called for.

Instead of recognizing the State as "the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men," the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent.

Any expectation of an essential change of regime through a change of party-administration is illusory.

It is unfortunately none to well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

It is unfortunately none to well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the existing regime is a regime of personal government. It is nominally republican, but actually monocratic; a curious anomaly, but highly characteristic of a people little gifted with intellectual integrity.

Courts. To be seen as you would see the Tower of London or menagerie of Versailles with their lions, tigers, hyænas, and other beasts of prey, standing in the same relation to their fellows. A slight acquaintance with them will suffice to show you that under the most imposing exterior, they are the weakest and worst part of mankind.

The political powers, in both Jesus' day and our own, play on fear to get their way—whether it be the fear of the emperor, the fear of terrorists, the fear of the foreign "other," or the fear of death. But with "this day" comes a new possibility. The first words spoken after Jesus' birth are "'Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.

Words have consequences.