Skip to content

Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival.

— Jack Williamson Star Bridge (1955)

Another quote →

Topics

Power

More quotes by Jack Williamson

Human knowledge is never entirely consistent or complete, because the human brain is only a crude and transient mass of watery cells, error-prone and glacier-slow.

The Humanoid Universe (1980)

Human belief is seldom related to truth.

The Humanoid Universe (1980)

SF still appeals to the young, as always, because so much of it is set in the futures in which they will be living.

Will Academe Kill SF? (1978)

Accelerating change has become almost the first fact of life.

Will Academe Kill SF? (1978)

Conquerors live by conquest; the first failure is a signal for the conquered to rise against them.

Star Bridge (1955)

All Jack Williamson quotes →

You may also like

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jack Williamson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.