Quotes About Power

You don't know this, 'cause you're too young," came the usual lecture, "but the politicians run all the big scams. Government's the thief of all time. That's why it tries so hard to catch thieves - it doesn't like the competition

She had a nice laugh, even when she was using it as a weapon against him.

The only solution to the environment is neglect, which requires our collapse." A sentence the biologist had excised from her thesis, but one that had burned bright in her mind, and now in Ghost Bird's, where, even analyzed and kept at arm's length like all received memories, it had a kind of power.

And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret.

Her only weapons were her tears.

Somos arquitectos de nuestro propio destino.

In fact, he was barely a man anymore. He was the devil. And sooner or later the devil destroyed everything in his reach. It was his nature.

I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, comrade?

The larger the prisoner's pain (the smaller the prisoner's world and therefore by comparison) the larger the torturer's world... pain becomes power... the torturer uses the prisoner's aliveness to crush the things that he lives for.

The goal of the torturer is to make the one, the body, emphatically and crushingly present by destroying it, and to make the other, the voice, absent by destroying it.

The severity and intensity of this disorder comes from the NPD individual's desperate pursuit to gain a sense of self. He consciously understands none of this, yet his inner need to feel worthwhile causes him to manipulate people in order to maintain an endless supply of attention, control, status, money, power, or recognition.

The ultimate weapon for the abusive individual is the refusal to communicate directly....

Above all is the NPD person's need for control, particularly in close relationships.

Xavier long-ago recognized the power of his looks and commanding presence and had successfully parlayed it to his advantage throughout his career and writing had been very lucrative for him. Then, he met Pilar, his #1 fanatic fan and the game changed. The shit got real.

Cada seis años la Patria cambia de apellido

Una ola de ira inundo mis calles y mis cielos vacíos. Esa ola que no se ve y que de pronto avanza, derriba puentes, muros, quita vidas y hace generales.

Entre el poder de la oración y las palabras que la contenían existía la misma distancia que entre las dos Isabeles:

History is written by the last fellow at the typewriter.

Every command consists of momentum and sting. The momentum forces the recipient to act, and to act in accordance with the content of the command; the sting remains behind in him. When a command functions normally and as one expects, there is nothing to be seen of the sting; it is hidden and unsuspected and may only reveal its existence by some faint, scarcely perceptible recalcitrance before the command obeyed.

The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.

Every command leaves behind a painful sting in the person who is forced to carry it out.

Um Livreiro pode ser um Rei, mas um Rei jamais será um Livreiro.

Pero hoy la guerra ya no es guerra. Ya no es el hombre quien cuenta, la máquina lo es todo.

It is not, however, only the word, it is also the thing, in all its infinite complexity, that he [Kafka] articulates with unrivaled courage and clarity. For, since he fears power in any form, since the real aim of his life is to withdraw from it, in whatever form it may appear, he detects it, identifies it, names it, and creates figures of it in every instance where others would accept it as being nothing out of the ordinary.