Quotes About Power

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.

Must be yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please.

A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it—it keeps him upright.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.

Prof is right; more than three people can't decide anything.

That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.

Robert A. Heinlein

Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss.

My point is that one person is responsible, Always. If H-bombs exist--and they do--some man controls them. In terms of morals there is no such thing as 'state'. Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

An honest politician is one that stays bought.

Ben, why should anybody want that much power? Why does a moth fly toward light?

To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.

Everybody is equal. Everybody! That's the law. They are? Only from on top.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

We organized First and Second Volunteer Defense Gunners of Free Luna-two regiments so that First could snub lowly Second and Second could be jealous of First.

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.

government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.