Motivational Quotes

Power

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

- Cooley, Charles Horton

Best Quotes about Power

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

No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated.

Seneca

The secret to all power is to only do that which all would willingly do.

Kinkel

The greatest power is often simple patience.

Cossman, E. Joseph

In oratory the will must predominate.

Hare, David

The law always limits every power it gives.

Hume, David

Our bodies are our gardens... our wills are our gardeners.

Shakespeare, William

Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Our power is in our ability to decide.

Fuller, Buckminster

10.

Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

James A. Garfield

11.

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

12.

I shan't be pulling the levers there but I shall be a very good back-seat driver.

Thatcher, Margaret

13.

The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

14.

Where there is a will there is a lawsuit.

Mizner, Addison

15.

The point of power is always in the present moment.

Hay, Louise L.

16.

Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

Foucault, Michel

17.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

David Brin

18.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Marden, Orison Swett

19.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

20.

Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.

Dr. Thomas Fuller

21.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

White, Theodore

22.

Personal power is the ability to take action.

Robbins, Anthony

23.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Shaw, George Bernard

24.

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

Seneca

25.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

Voice of one, voice of none.

Proverb, Italian

27.

From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes.

Camus, Albert

28.

To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

29.

When the will is ready the feet are light.

Proverb

30.

The one who wills is the one who can.

Proverb

31.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

Harry Shearer

32.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

Henrik Ibsen

33.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

35.

When a man's willing and eager the god's join in.

Aeschylus

36.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Shakespeare, William

37.

We will by conscious command evolve cerebral centers which will permit us to use powers that we now are not even capable of imagining.

Tilney, Dr. Frederick

38.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

Patton, George S.

39.

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

Bruyere, Jean De La

40.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Jefferson, Thomas

41.

You possess a potent force that you either use, or misuse, hundreds of times every day.

Kohe, J. Martin

42.

The price of power is responsibility for the public good.

Aldrich, Withrop

43.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Kissinger, Henry

44.

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

Barthes, Roland

45.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

46.

If you sit in judgment, investigate, if you sit in supreme power, sit in command.

Seneca

47.

The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either

Weil, Simone

48.

A person who is wise does nothing against their will, nothing with sighing or under coercion.

Cicero, Marcus T.

49.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Frost, Robert

50.

All personal, psychological, social, and institutionalized domination on this earth can be traced back to its source: the phallic identities of men.

Dworkin, Andrea