Quotes About Power

I hate how the media tries to control our minds. It's a new form of very subtle fascism.

It was bitterly cold, and the darkness was overwhelming. Everyone who lived through that night was amazed by the intense clarity of the sky overhead and the brightness of the stars. They found themselves in a land without power, television, telephones, a place suddenly plucked up and folded into a pocket of time, disconnected from the twenty-first century.

There was no advance warning, no marginal area of incremental damage. The wave had come in with full force, spent itself and stopped at a point as clearly defined as the reach of a high tide. Above it, nothing had been touched; below it, everything was changed.

among the country's senior

It was frightening and wonderful to surrender to the wind's power.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

The Cold War isn't thawing it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

If when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation… acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

I brought myself down. I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in. And they twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.

When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.

I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

Man is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness.

To the one who makes Zeus look like a tiny spark.

It is essential to a politician that he should have his firmest friends among the fools, or his climbing days will soon be over.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

Jesus quickly decided, as these men all decide, that the power must be used for the benefit of the race.

Great Carthage drove three wars. After the first one it was still powerful. After the second one it was still inhabitable. After the third one it was no longer possible to find her.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don't care what they say, they like it.

My telephone calls and meetings and decisions were now parts of a prescribed ritual aimed at making peace with the past his calls, his meetings and his decisions were already the ones that would shape America's future. (On transfer of power to Gerald R Ford)