Motivational Quotes

Power

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

- Harry Shearer

Best Quotes about Power

The man whose authority is recent is always stern.

Aeschylus

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

Thatcher, Margaret

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

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

Dr. Thomas Fuller

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

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

Seneca

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

Carnegie, Dale

Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?

Lincoln, Abraham

10.

The look of a king is itself a deed.

Paul, Jean

11.

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

12.

The will is commendable though the ability may be wanting.

Ovid

13.

The secret of all power is - save your force. If you want high pressure you must choke off waste.

Joseph Farrell

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.

Billings, Josh

17.

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

18.

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

Seneca

19.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

Steinem, Gloria

22.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Pitt, William

23.

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

Bacon, Francis

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Lindner, Robert

27.

No man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Colton, Charles Caleb

28.

Authority is not power; that's coercion. Authority is not knowledge; that's persuasion, or seduction. Authority is simply that the author has the right to make a statement and to be heard.

Kahn, Herman

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.

Tillich, Paul

34.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

Hendrix, Jimi

35.

No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.

Smith, Sydney

36.

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

37.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it.

Charles Caleb Colton

38.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

39.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

41.

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

Aeschylus

42.

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

Henrik Ibsen

43.

Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.

Covey, Stephen R.

44.

All the power that we exercise over others depends on the power we exercise over ourselves.

Cotvos

45.

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

Fromm, Erich

46.

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

Hazlitt, William

47.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

Niebuhr, Reinhold

48.

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

49.

A boy's will is the will of the wind.

Proverb, Norse

50.

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.

Amiel, Henri Frederic