Power Quotes

This Blood that but one drop of has the power to win. All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.
– Saint Thomas Aquinas
Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
– Aristotle
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
– Aristotle
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
– Matthew Arnold
Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
– Matthew Arnold
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows - only hard with luminous edges - and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen.
– Edwin Abbott Abbott
I welcome him like I welcome cold sores. He's from England, he's angry and he's got Mad Power Disease.
– Paula Abdul
Extremists, who thrive on conflict; who do not tolerate diversity; who seek power through division and destruction. The global system they hope to create is one of new walls and new isolation, and radically smaller horizons. It is an anti-democratic, anti-economic-growth, and anti-progress agenda.
– King Abdullah II
When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.
– Geoffrey F. Abert
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
– Freda Adler
For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.
– Dante Alighieri
The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
– Brooks Anderson
An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.
– Richard Bach
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.
– Roseanne Barr
I am not a violent person. I am a product of the Flower Power '60s. I have actually worn bell-bottomed jeans.
– Dave Barry
I'm not after fame and success and fortune and power. It's mostly that I want to have a good job and have good friends; that's the good stuff in life.
– Drew Barrymore
I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
– Roland Barthes
Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
– Henry Ward Beecher
The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it.
– Chris Bell
The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge) Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
– Hilaire Belloc
Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.
– Bo Bennett
The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
– John Berger
Because our military power dwarfs that of other countries - we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined - this Administration believes that alliances and international institutions are more of a burden than a benefit. They allow the Lilliputians to tie down Gulliver.
– Joe Biden
I do not question the motives of either the neo-conservatives in this Administration who discount the value of alliances and the international institutions we've built or the pure multilateralists in my own Party who believe that we can only exercise power if we get the world's approval first.
– Joe Biden
Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.
– Jim Bishop
People always joke that dog spells god backwards. They should consider that it might be the higher power coming down to see just how well they do, what kind of people they are. The animals are right here, right in front of us. And how we treat these companions is a test.
– Linda Blair
Th' oppressive, sturdy, man-destroying villains, Who ravag'd kingdoms, and laid empires waste, And in a cruel wantonness of power, Thinn'd states of half their people, and gave up To want the rest.
– Robert Blair
The spirit and determination of the people to chart their own destiny is the greatest power for good in human affairs.
– Matt Blunt
I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying Open! was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.
– Erma Bombeck
We must remember that politics is more than a power game. The core of politics in my view is to serve our citizens, to serve our fellow human beings.
– Kjell Magne Bondevik
If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.
– James Boswell
If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.
– John Bright
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
– Jacob Bronowski
Power is the by-product of understanding.
– Jacob Bronowski
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.
– Phillip Brooks
There's too many people in seats of power who just haven't got a clue what they're doing. They're bean counters, and it just pisses me off because consequently our kids go to see crap movies.
– Pierce Brosnan
Government is the tool of the moneyed powers. That concentration of power is happening because Congress is bought off. The system is rigged. And anyone who because of some schoolbook imagery thinks we have some sort of a democratically elected government is not reading the signs of the times.
– Jerry Brown
The farmers markets were another step to giving people an opportunity to take more power over their own lives-and also to provide another outlet for organic produce. That is important because the production and distribution of food is increasingly being monopolized and controlled by large corporate structures, large financial structures.
– Jerry Brown
Evil can be a teacher, if you look at the wisdom of its negative power.
– Tom Brown, Jr.
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
– Sir Thomas Browne
An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
– Martin Buber
Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power.
– Martin Buber
The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
– Pearl S. Buck
Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton
For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors-newspaper or broadcast-can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.
– Warren E. Burger
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
– Edmund Burke
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.
– Robert Burton
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
– Leo Buscaglia
The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.
– George W. Bush
The most dramatic realization was that in surrender I would find more freedom and power than I'd ever known.
– Brett Butler
What is at stake is less a theory of cultural construction than a consideration of the scenography and topography of construction. This scenography is orchestrated by and as a matrix of power that remains disarticulated if we presume constructedness and materiality as necessarily oppositional notions.
– Judith Butler
The power of Thought, the magic of the Mind!
– Lord Byron
His hope is treacherous only whose love dies with beauty, which is varying every hour, bit, in chaste hearts uninfluenced by the power of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower, that breathes on earth the air of paradise.
– Michelangelo
The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.
– Michelangelo
The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway has got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways.
– Nathaniel Bacon
Threats without power are like powder without ball.
– Nathan Bailey
It is the indispensible duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who possess the obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.
– Benjamin Banneker
Liberty of conscience from the power of the civil magistrate hath been of late years so largely and learnedly handled, that I shall need to be but brief in it; yet it is to be lamented, that few have walked answerably to this principle, each pleading it for themselves, but scarce allowing it to others, as hereafter I shall have occasion more at length to observe.
– Robert Barclay
So the question is, First, Whether the civil magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their conscience, and if they will not to punish them in their goods, liberties, or lives? this we hold in the negative.
– Robert Barclay
A habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.
– Joel Barlow
Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.
– Ernest Becker
I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.
– Harry Belafonte
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
– Stephen Vincent Benet
I practice yoga at Baptiste Power Yoga, which has studios around town. It's great for flexibility, it's therapeutic, and great for your attitude. And it gets you some silence during your day.
– Tom Brady
Neither, I must say with all due respect, is it the power of teachers and students. Basically the true and real power is with working people of all colors, of all beliefs, of all national origins.
– Harry Bridges
Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.
– Arthur Brisbane
A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.
– Fawn M. Brodie
You can't give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad - in fact, to do anything it wants.
– Harry Browne
I do not wish to give up the power of personal arms and be defenseless against those who will ever and always keep and bear arms those in crime and those in government.
– Robert W. Burke
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.
– John C. Calhoun
Progressive Conservative candidates from Quebec want to exert real power in Ottawa, not simply be content with playing a secondary role.
– Kim Campbell
Dr. King's leadership reaffirmed the promise of our democracy: that everyday people, working together, have the power to change our government and our institutions for the better.
– Maria Cantwell
We'll make our voices heard loud and clear on the importance of cost-based power.
– Maria Cantwell
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it ;better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.
– Thomas Carlyle
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
– Dale Carnegie
It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.
– Emily Carr
The spirit must be felt so intensely that it has power to call others in passing, for it must pass, not stop in the pictures.
– Emily Carr
For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.
– John Cheever
What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.
– John Cheever
At least this much is clear: Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today in Iraq.
– Dick Cheney
Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam hussein would still be in power today in Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly still be in control of Kuwait.
– Dick Cheney
How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat? If we had not acted, Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be in power.
– Dick Cheney
Women have to harness their power - its absolutely true. It's just learning not to take the first no. And if you can't go straight ahead, you go around the corner.
– Cher
There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.
– Noam Chomsky
Men have the power of thinking that they may avoid sin.
– Saint John Chrysostom
Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goal of a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs individual exertion and greater production.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Air power can either paralyze the enemy's military action or compel him to devote to the defense of his bases and communications a share of his straitened resources far greater that what we need in the attack.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.
– Emile M. Cioran
No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
– Emile M. Cioran
The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.
– Emile M. Cioran
What this task requires in the way of higher intellectual gifts is a sense of unity and a power of judgement, raised to a marvelous pitch of vision, which easily grasps and dismisses a thousand remote possibilities an ordinary mind would labor to identify, and wear itself out in doing so.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
– Joseph Conrad
Anybody who has stood on the prairie in North Dakota has felt the force of the wind and knows that our state has an inexhaustible supply of wind power. The potential here to create jobs and draw millions of dollars in new investment to North Dakota is enormous.
– Kent Conrad
We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.
– Charles Horton Cooley
Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.
– Calvin Coolidge
A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.
– James Fenimore Cooper