Quotes About Power

from local than national authority.

E tanto a Grã-Bretanha quando o mundo sabiam que a revolução lançada nestas ilhas não só pelos comerciantes e empresários como através deles, cuja única lei era comprar no mercado mais barato e vender sem restrição no mais caro estava transformando o mundo. Nada poderia detê-la. Os deuses e os reis do passado eram impotentes diante dos homens de negócios e das máquinas a vapor do presente.

En estas circunstancias, la democracia era más bien un mecanismo para formalizar las divisiones entre grupos irreconciliables.

Es cierto que los imperios se han construido a menudo con la ayuda de las armas, pero las armas no bastan para mantener el orden, como nos lo recuerda un viejo dicho que se remonta a los tiempos napoleónicos: «Puedes hacer lo que quieras con una bayoneta, salvo sentarte en ella».

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

Rudeness is a weak persons imitation of strength.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power

The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man's reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence.

Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors. They want to retaliate.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.     142

When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Patience is a byproduct of growth - we can bide our time when it is the time of our growth. There is no patience in acquisition or in the pursuit of power and fame. Nothing is so impatient as the pursuit of a substitute for growth.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength

The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man's reason and the boundless range of his intelligence.

All through the ages schoolmasters seem to have had the delusion that they could order society as readily as they could a classroom.

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.

There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as the conservatism of the privileged, and the former is as much a factor in the perpetuation of a social order as the latter.

Another English revolution by the rich occurred at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was the Industrial Revolution. The breathtaking potentialities of mechanization set the minds of manufacturers and merchants on fire. They began a revolution "as extreme and radical as ever inflamed the minds of sectarians,"8 and in a relatively short time these respectable, Godfearing citizens changed the face of England beyond recognition. When

The man of action saves the movement from the suicidal dissensions and the recklessness of the fanatics. But his appearance usually marks the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. The war with the present is over. The genuine man of action is intent not on renovating the world but on possessing it. Whereas the life breath of the dynamic phase was protest and a desire for drastic change, the final phase is chiefly preoccupied with administering and perpetuating the power won.

With the coming of automation it may eventually be possible for a ruling intelligentsia to operate a country's economy without the aid of the masses, and it is legitimate to speculate on what the intellectual may be tempted to do with the masses once they become superfluous.