Motivational Quotes

Power

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

- Fromm, Erich

Best Quotes about Power

A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength. [Proverbs 24:5]

Bible

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

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

Where does virgin wool come from? The sheep that runs the fastest.

Banks, Harry F.

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

Cotvos

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

Joseph Farrell

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

Macarthur, Douglas

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

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

10.

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

Seneca

11.

What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that's another matter.

Drucker, Peter F.

12.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

13.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

Elie Wiesel

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

The one who wills is the one who can.

Proverb

17.

If power is for sale, sell your mother to buy it. You can always buy her back again.

Proverb, Arabian

18.

Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.

Gaddis, William

19.

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

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

20.

When the will is ready the feet are light.

Proverb

21.

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

Harry Shearer

22.

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

23.

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

Capone, Al

24.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Hare, David

25.

The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. [Job 1:21]

Bible

26.

He has the power who the majority believe in.

Raupach

27.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Marden, Orison Swett

28.

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

Proverb, Yiddish

29.

Let them hate, so long as they fear.

Accius

30.

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.

Steinem, Gloria

31.

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.

Proverb, Chinese

32.

When one is willing and eager, the Gods join in.

Aeschylus

33.

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

Wordsworth, William

34.

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

Lindner, Robert

35.

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

36.

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

Amy Tan

37.

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

Lao-Tzu

38.

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

39.

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

Dr. Thomas Fuller

40.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

41.

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

42.

Where there is a will there is a lawsuit.

Mizner, Addison

43.

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

44.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

Our power is not so much in us as through us.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

46.

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

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

47.

Thoughts mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire are powerful things.