Motivational Quotes

Power

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

Best Quotes about Power

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

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

The man whose authority is recent is always stern.

Aeschylus

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

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

Seneca

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

White, Theodore

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

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

Eliot, T. S.

10.

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

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 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

13.

Will it, and set to work briskly.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

14.

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

15.

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

Camus, Albert

16.

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

Alinsky, Saul

17.

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

18.

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

Proverb, Yiddish

19.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.

Haliburton, Thomas C.

21.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

22.

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

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

25.

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

Niebuhr, Reinhold

26.

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

Weil, Simone

27.

Let them hate, so long as they fear.

Accius

28.

To achieve, you need thought.You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Rand, Ayn

29.

The creation of a thousand forest in one acorn.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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.

31.

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

Steinem, Gloria

32.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

The greatest power is often simple patience.

Cossman, E. Joseph

34.

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

Malcolm X

35.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

Bacon, Francis

38.

Voice of one, voice of none.

Proverb, Italian

39.

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

Seneca

40.

Power over a man's subsistence amounts to power over his will.

Hamilton, Alexander

41.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whatever it touches.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

42.

I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me..

Rilke, Rainer Maria

43.

A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.

Syrus, Publilius

44.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

Hugo, Victor

45.

When thou standest still from thinking and willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking will be revealed to thee, and so God heareth and seeth through thee. Thine own hearing, willing, and seeing hindereth thee, that thou dost not see nor hear God.

Boehme, Jacob

46.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Pitt, William

47.

The look of a king is itself a deed.

Paul, Jean

48.

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

Boseley, Sarah

49.

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