quotations about power
The natural destiny of power is fragmentation.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
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.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.
VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE
"The Economic Tendency of Freethought"
Power seems to confer on its possessor a mantle of superiority, specialness, and sexual potency, which the envious person desperately wants because he feels himself on some level to be inferior, unimportant, and impotent.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Narcissism: Denial of the True Self
God made every man to have power to be mightier than the events round about him; to hold by his firm will the reigns by which all things are guided.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
One of the tremendous evils of the world is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands. Half a dozen men may, at this moment, light the fires of war through the world, may convulse all civilized nations, sweep earth and sea with armed hosts, spread desolation through the fields and bankruptcy through cities, and make themselves felt by some form of suffering through every household in Christendom.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
He who has great desire should have great power; if not, woe be to him.
WILLIAM OF POITIERS
attributed, Day's Collacon
We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Power deludes the ones who wield it.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
"John Hancock Otis", Spoon River Anthology
Power dies, power goes under and gutters out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive. As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever existed, and it returns.
LOUISE ERDRICH
Tracks
I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
attributed, The Dance of Life
What elements of power we wield! Truth unmixed with error, flashing as God's own lightning in its brightness, resistless if properly wielded, as that living flame!
T. M. EDDY
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
People at the top do not want to share their power. They've always got some marvellous reason: I'm following my religion; I'm following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I'm representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don't cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn't be pessimistic about it.
TONY BENN
interview, "Hope is the Key", Share International, January 2003
To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful, is that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, The Great Quotations