A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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.
It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could.
“You think staying in power is why they do it?”
“That’s usually the reason for arbitrary cruelty.”
Control yourself and no one else
And you will
see the Truth my brother
Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power.