quotations about power
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Queen Mab
Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Narcissism: Denial of the True Self
Power dies, power goes under and gutters out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive. As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever existed, and it returns.
LOUISE ERDRICH
Tracks
Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.
MAHATMA GANDHI
The Indian States' Problem
To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
EDMUND BURKE
A Vindication of Natural Society
Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.
WOODROW WILSON
letter to Mary A. Hulbert, September 21, 1913
All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mr. Leiper, June 12, 1815
God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The steps of power are often steps on sand.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Give me power but for a single day, and it is mine forever.
SEMIRAMIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Power is superior to mere literature.
GREGORY I
attributed, Day's Collacon
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
A Wizard of Earthsea
Power unsubjected to the control of virtue is a poor guardian of civil liberty.
J. P. ZENGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The spell of power never quite releases its hold.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Second Foundation
So long as there is an uneasy class, a class which has not its just power, it will rashly clutch and blindly believe the notion that all men should have the same power.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Power never takes a back step -- only in the face of more power.
MALCOLM X
Malcolm X Speaks