Quotes About Power

They that have power to hurt and will do none,That do not do the thing they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,Become them with one half so good a graceAs mercy does.

William Shakespeare

Begin at Act II, Scene 2, line 242: Royal wench, she did lay great Caesar's sword to bed--he plowed her and she cropt.

First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

He was my friend, faithful, and just to me, but Brutus says, he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious. When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept. Ambition should me made of sterner stuff, yet Brutus says, he was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man.

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

Lady you berefit me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, And there is such confusion in my powers.

Lady you bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, And there is such confusion in my powers.

Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

So I had to learn that a lopsided relationship doesn't work. The exercise of power is inevitably self-defeating. What happens is that the person without power loses their self-respect, their whole entity becomes less, and the reasons their partner fell in love with them disappear.

Being an icon is overrated, remember an icon can be moved by a mouse

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Law is not as disinterested as our concepts of law pretend; law serves power; law in large measure is a recapitulation of the status quo; it confirms a rigid order designed to insulate the beneficiaries of the status quo from the disturbances of change. The painful truth--one with a long history--is that police are around in large part to guarantee a peaceful disgestion for the rich.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

Over a period of time (roughly 100 years) a world power emerges from a global war only to experience a gradual decay in its position of preponderance," writes Thompson. "Global order decays at a parallel rate until a new global war occurs and facilitates the emergence of a new world power.

The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.

Authoritarian government isn't dead; it's just hibernating, poised to return in the Fourth Turning, rested and refreshed.

The ecclesiastics were, practically speaking, surrogates of the State.

Whatever happened I would not, I dared not, become a hostage to grief. Anthony had been my sweet companion for seventeen years, but grieving for myself because he had died was neither tribute nor benefit to him and should not become the purpose or the focus of my existence. …If I allowed this, the power of death would not only have claimed Anthony in the grave but would also seize me – prematurely, or without sufficient pretext.

She could do to me with one eyebrow what two weeks without water can do to a plant.

He was asking for it, and he basically made me do it, and I just weren't powerful enough to hold back the surge that took me over. Blaming me is like blaming the sky for raining.

In the ideology of the free market, freedom is conceived as the absence of interference from others. There are no common ends to which our desires are directed. In the absence of such ends, all that remains is the sheer arbitrary power of one will against another.