Power Quotes
This is a smaller page, and the top names are Shakespeare, Tacitus, Jefferson, John Adams and Michel Foucault. Bertrand Russell supplies the best-sourced material. His Power: A New Social Analysis (1938) argues that power is to social science what energy is to physics, and an earlier essay (1928) adds that after enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure is preventing others from enjoying themselves. Emerson, in 1876, has a gentler view: that thoughts rule the world.
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t” is credited to Margaret Thatcher and is the only entry on the page flagged as misattributed.
He who enlists a man's mind wields a power even greater than the sword or the scepter.
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?
Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge.
Virtue has great power, but not if it is imposed—only when it is chosen.
Power can command wealth but wealth can’t always command power.
We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
There’s something more powerful than bombs, and that’s your vote. People must vote!
His understanding is not great, but his sense of power and treachery is unfailing.