Quotes About Power

We must be curious to learn how such a set of objects—hundreds of power plants, thousands of bombs, tens of thousands of people massed in national establishments—can be traced back to a few people sitting at laboratory benches discussing the peculiar behavior of one type of atom. Spencer R. Weart

Fermi thought plutonium production needed an area a mile wide and two miles long for safety. Compton proposed building piles of increasing power to work up to full-scale production and was considering alternative sites in the Lake Michigan Dunes area and in the Tennessee Valley.

There are those about us who say that such research should be stopped by law, alleging that man's destructive powers are already large enough. [...] There is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbour (Aston in 1936)

Anne Harrington de Santana, has discerned that nuclear weapons have acquired the status of fetish objects; like the coin of the realm in relation to commodities, our glittering warheads have become markers of national power: "Just as access to wealth in the form of money determines an individual's opportunities and place in a social hierarchy, access to power in the form of nuclear weapons determines a state's opportunities and place in the international order.

The matter should continue to be regarded as of the utmost secrecy; but when a "bomb" is finally available, it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese, who should be warned that this bombardment will be repeated until they surrender.

Our regime," Franco announced grandly, "is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.

Each kilogram of heavy hydrogen equaled about 85,000 tons TNT equivalent.1622 Theoretically, 12 kilograms of liquid heavy hydrogen—26 pounds—ignited by one atomic bomb would explode with a force equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT.

The source of power in Papin's engine wasn't steam but the weight of the atmosphere acting on the vacuum the condensing steam left behind. So increasing the power of his engine required using a larger volume of steam in larger cylinders that could entrain a larger column of atmosphere. At the time, no one knew how to manufacture such large-scale machinery. Papin hoped his new engine might be a major inducement to its development.

Falling water is the oldest source of industrial power other than muscle.

In 1841 two American engineers calculated the energy available from the falls for turning waterwheels at 4.5 million horsepower. The US Army Corps of Engineers, surveying the Great Lakes in 1868, estimated Niagara's total available energy as about 6 million horsepower

Alternating current had a massive advantage over direct current: it could be transformed easily into a higher or lower voltage. Voltage, like water pressure, moves electric charge. Amperage, like water volume, delivers more charge. The two qualities interact inversely. Stepping up voltage reduces amperage. Stepping up voltage allows alternating current to flow on wires of smaller diameter without encountering as much energy-sapping resistance.

Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbor.

The colonists competed for the wood, however. The first American sawmill began operations in 1663 on the Salmon Falls River in New Hampshire, long before the English advanced from sawing board by hand to using water power.

Not testosterone per se but the patriarchal preference for subjecting males to violentization, and their physical advantage in achieving early successful violent performances, explains why men are much more likely than women to be seriously violent.

He waited another minute, then another, and then when it seemed that the anxiety was too much to bear, he ordered 'ZIP in!' Ã¢â'¬Â It was 3:53 P.M. Fermi had run the pile for 4.5 minutes at one-half watt and brought to fruition all the years of discovery and experiment. Men had controlled the release of energy from the atomic nucleus.

the energy from each bursting uranium nucleus would be sufficient to make a visible grain of sand visibly jump.

The internal combustion engine evolved from the steam engine. Both use hot gases expanding within an enclosed cylinder to supply power. The gas in a steam engine is steam, generated externally by heating water in a boiler and introduced through a valve into the cylinder, where it expands and pushes on a piston connected to a rod that transfers the motion outside the engine to turn a pair of wheels.

Alternating current won the War of the Currents. Even Edison grudgingly took up manufacturing the equipment to produce it. Motors large and small, all the way down to motors for individual sewing machines, began replacing the shafts and belts that transferred power inefficiently from steam engines. Country people still read and cooked with kerosene, but electric lights went on in the cities of the world.

The hydrogen bomb was thus under development in the United States onward from July 1942.

Perhaps the greatest immediate danger which faces us is the probability that our 'demonstration' of atomic bombs will precipitate a race in the production of these devices between the United States and Russia.

The power the old exert over the young is the power to send the young to war -- flesh in its perfection dropped into a hellish maze of stimulus and response in order to defend an old man's phrase. A phrase! What? The American way of life? Yes. It galls me to say it, but yes. This paragraph costs me nothing. And yet I know it cost the life of a boy or a girl with a ready body and a mind not ripe. N one will come to question me this evening.

If you look at the history of heretics who are condemned, their transgression is normally about issues of authority, priesthood, administration of sacraments, and "Who's got the power?" I cannot think of anyone who was ever burned at the stake for not taking care of the widows and orphans, or for any issues of orthopraxy.

When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through.

There are three primary things that we have to let go of. First is the compulsion to be successful. Second is the compulsion to be right—even, and especially, to be theologically right…. Finally there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control. I