Motivational Quotes

Power

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

- A. Bartlett Giamatti

Best Quotes about Power

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Stewart L. Udall

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of

Vidal, Gore

What a person wills and not what they know determines their worth or unworth, power or impotence, happiness or unhappiness.

Lindner, Robert

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.

Genet, Jean

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Baldwin, James

10.

Thoughts mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire are powerful things.

Hill, Napoleon

11.

We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.

Lerner, Max

12.

There is an urgent need -- in fact a national survival need -- for invigorating intellectual life, for upgrading the general regard for intellectual excellence. The United States must experience an intellectual renaissance or it will experience defeat. The time cannot be far off -- if indeed it is not already here -- when the strength of a nation, measured in terms of any kind of world competition, will depend less on the number of its bombs than on the number of its learned men.

Roper, Elmo

13.

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

John Lehman

14.

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

15.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Swift, Jonathan

16.

The one who wills is the one who can.

Proverb

17.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Baltasar Gracian

18.

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Stephen Vincent Benet

19.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

Carnegie, Andrew

20.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

Adams, John

21.

Louis the XVI knew how to love, pardon, and die: had he known how to punish, he would have known how to reign.

Tilly

22.

Will it, and set to work briskly.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

23.

One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.

John Stuart Mill

24.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

Mann, Horace

25.

He is the most powerful who has himself, in his power.

Seneca

26.

The man whose authority is recent is always stern.

Aeschylus

27.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Havel, Vaclav

28.

The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he could.

Proverb, Spanish

29.

Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.

Morgenthau, Hans J.

30.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

Barthes, Roland

31.

I said to the almond tree, Friend, speak to me of God, and the almond tree blossomed.

Kazantzakis, Nikos

32.

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time that the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

33.

Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

Orwell, George

34.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.

Hoffer, Eric

35.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Atwood, Margaret

36.

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

Vizinczey, Stephen

37.

He has the power who the majority believe in.

Raupach

38.

If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.

Hazlitt, William

39.

Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

Lois McMaster Bujold

41.

Unless a serpent devour a serpent it will not become a dragon. Unless one power absorb another, it will not become great.

Proverb

42.

You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!

Amy Tan

43.

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Carnegie, Dale

44.

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

Rostand, Jean

45.

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.

Lao-Tzu

46.

If school results were the key to power, girls would be running the world.

Boseley, Sarah

47.

Voice of one, voice of none.

Proverb, Italian

48.

The most exquisite paradox as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all.As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.

Dass, Ram

49.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Hare, David

50.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Alinsky, Saul