Quotes About Power

We aren't filled with fear except by things that are bad; and not by them, either, as long as it is in our power to avoid them.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.

who is your master? Whoever has authority over anything that you're anxious to gain or avoid.

People find particular things, however, frightening; and it's when someone is able to threaten or entice us with those that the man himself becomes frightening.

End the habit of despising things that are not within your power, and apply your aversion to things that are within your power.

Don't you want to be free of all that? [33] 'But how can I do it?' You've often heard how – you need to suspend desire completely, and train aversion only on things within your power. You should dissociate yourself from everything outside yourself – the body, possessions, reputation, books, applause, as well as office or lack of office. Because a preference for any of them immediately makes you a slave, a subordinate, and prone to disappointment.

for your part, do not desire to be a general, or a senator, or a consul, but to be free; and the only way to this is a disregard of things which lie not within our own power.

You can be invincible, if you enter into no contest in which it is not in your power to conquer.

Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, "You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing." And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

Tis true I know what evil I shall do but passion overpowers the better council.

Whenever a challenge arises, turn inward and ask what power you can exercise in the situation. If you meet temptation, use self-control; if you meet pain, use fortitude; if you meet revulsion, use patience. In this way, you will overcome life's challenges, rather than be overcome by them.

I'll show you that I'm master.' —How will you do that? Zeus has set me free. Do you really suppose that he would allow his own son to be turned into a slave? You're master of my carcass, take that.

Freedom, you see, is having events go in accordance with our will, never contrary to it.

Can we avoid people? How is that possible? And if we associate with them, can we change them? Who gives us that power?

Destroy desire completely for the present. For if you desire anything which is not in our power, you must be unfortunate

But I want power and renown so that I may help other people," you say. What do you mean by "help"? Can you really give them happiness and satisfaction—things that are in their own spheres of power, not yours?

Whoever then has knowledge of good things, would know how to love them; but how could one who cannot distinguish good things from evil and things indifferent from both have power to love?

I will throw you into prison.' 'Correction – it is my body you will throw there.

When you desire something outside your sphere of power, you set yourself up for disappointment

Hay cosas que están bajo nuestro control y otras que están más allá de este. Bajo nuestro control están nuestras opiniones, nuestras preferencias, nuestros deseos, nuestras inclinaciones, nuestras aversiones; en una palabra, todo lo que es inherente a nuestras acciones.

If you wish to be rich, you should know that it is neither a good thing nor at all in your power: but if you wish to be happy, you should know that it is both a good thing and in your power, for the one is a temporary loan of fortune, and happiness comes from the will.

Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing. The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own.

I will throw you into prison. Correction – it is my body you will throw there.

there is but one way to freedom - to despise what is not in our power.