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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.

Random quote on Power

Most quoted on power:

Millions of people had been uprooted by the war and could not adapt themselves to a new way of life. On the other hand, certain people had grown rich and powerful.

Joy Adamson

Peace the offspring is of Power.

Bayard Taylor

Power is founded upon opinion.

Napoleon Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)

Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete.

Buckminster Fuller Cosmography (1992)

As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to...

John Locke Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Never, ever go near power. Don't become friends with anyone who has real power. It's dangerous.

Stanley Kubrick

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.

Cory Doctorow Little Brother (2008)

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Henry Kissinger

Power intoxicates those who hold it.

Mubarak Ali

An absolute majority doesn't mean absolute power. It doesn't mean governing alone. It's an increased responsibility.

António Costa António Costa (2022)

In the universe of power, all transactions proceed in more directions than one.

Paula Gunn Allen Grandmothers of The Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook (1991)

But from its inception, the labor movement had attracted the same range of opportunists and self-servers as would any activity that offered the unscrupulous an avenue toward power and self-enrichment.

Matthew Hughes Devil or Angel & Other Stories (2015)

WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME----------GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!

Stan Lee

CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.

Arthur C. Clarke

The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.

Henry Kissinger

Folly is built on pride, on pride and power,
And power ends in weariness and duty:
Even the hooded eagle cannot soar to heaven .

Michael Roberts

I asked Rajiv to be frank. I had no love for office or power. I could walk out any time. I was like a sojourner in an inn.

Zail Singh

Magical shadow with symbolic powers!
A voice from the distant past, an evocation,
Is it not mine prepared for incantation?

Stéphane Mallarmé Hérodiade (1898)

Is the only challenge in the world to be greed and viciousness? Is the only satisfying power the power of the ascent over men, the only dream, ambition? And must the alternative to greed, evil, ambition—be only sluggishness?

Tanith Lee Delirium's Mistress (1986)

5) Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.

Larry Niven

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