Motivational Quotes

Power

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

Best Quotes about Power

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Russell, Bertrand

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

Seneca

With the eye made quiet by power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.

Wordsworth, William

The look of a king is itself a deed.

Paul, Jean

The will is commendable though the ability may be wanting.

Ovid

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

Morgenthau, Hans J.

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

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

Lord Macaulay

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Pitt, William

10.

He that has one eye is a prince among those that have none.

Fuller, Thomas

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.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

Bacon, Francis

13.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Kissinger, Henry

14.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

15.

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

Thatcher, Margaret

16.

Free will and determinism are like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism. The way you play your hand is free will.

Cousins, Norman

17.

The one who wills is the one who can.

Proverb

18.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

19.

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

Carnegie, Dale

20.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

21.

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.

Syrus, Publilius

23.

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind -- not the fiend or the sadist.

Fromm, Erich

24.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Weil, Simone

25.

Power never takes a step back except in the face of more power.

Malcolm X

26.

Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

He has the power who the majority believe in.

Raupach

31.

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

Barthes, Roland

32.

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

33.

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.

Bevan, Aneurin

34.

Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

Thatcher, Margaret

35.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

38.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

40.

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

Amy Tan

41.

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

Aeschylus

42.

Not necessity, not desire --no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything --health, food, a place to live, entertainment --they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

Stephen Vincent Benet

44.

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

Henrik Ibsen

45.

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

Boseley, Sarah

46.

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