Motivational Quotes

Power

Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.

- Gaddis, William

Best Quotes about Power

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

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

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

Tilly

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

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

The one who wills is the one who can.

Proverb

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

He who gains a victory over other men is strong; but he who gains a victory over himself is all powerful.

Lao-Tzu

10.

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

Adams, John

11.

Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

13.

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

Malcolm X

14.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Hume, David

15.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

By time and council do the best we can: The event is never in the power of man.

Herrich

17.

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Capone, Al

18.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil-the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.

Jordan, William George

20.

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.

21.

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

Shakespeare, William

22.

Men should think twice before making widow hood woman's only path to power.

Steinem, Gloria

23.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.

Mencken, H. L.

24.

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

Camus, Albert

25.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Marden, Orison Swett

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Russell, Bertrand

30.

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

John Lehman

31.

If we cannot do what we will, we must will what we can.

Proverb, Yiddish

32.

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

Baldwin, James

33.

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

Bacon, Francis

34.

Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers.

Byrnes, James F.

35.

If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.

Eliot, T. S.

36.

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

Swift, Jonathan

37.

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

38.

The earth seemed to move with me. I found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never knew existed.

Bannister, Roger

39.

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

40.

Man has will, but woman has her way.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

41.

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

Morgenthau, Hans J.

42.

Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

44.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

45.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.

Lao-Tzu

47.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

48.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use - of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.

Robert F. Kennedy

50.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold