Motivational Quotes

Power

Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.

- Gaddis, William

Best Quotes about Power

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

Einstein, Albert

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Bannister, Roger

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

Wordsworth, William

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Peter, Laurence J.

The secret to all power is to only do that which all would willingly do.

Kinkel

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

Hamilton, Alexander

10.

The price of power is responsibility for the public good.

Aldrich, Withrop

11.

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

Lord Macaulay

12.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

14.

The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

15.

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

Lindner, Robert

16.

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.

Proverb, Chinese

17.

Man was predestined to have free will.

Luyah, Hal

18.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

19.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

20.

Personal power is the ability to take action.

Robbins, Anthony

21.

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

22.

When the will is ready the feet are light.

Proverb

23.

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

Morgenthau, Hans J.

24.

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

Seneca

25.

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.

26.

Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

James A. Garfield

27.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

28.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Baltasar Gracian

29.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Marden, Orison Swett

30.

Authority founded on injustice is never of long duration.

Seneca

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

Friedman, Milton

35.

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

Rostand, Jean

36.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

Steinem, Gloria

38.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

39.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

40.

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.

41.

Will cannot be quenched against its will.

Dante Alighieri

42.

Power is the by-product of understanding.

Bronowski, Jacob

43.

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

44.

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

45.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Stewart L. Udall

46.

Will it, and set to work briskly.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

47.

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

Byrnes, James F.

48.

Calmness is the cradle of power.