Power is more safely retained by cautious than by severe councils.
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.
Those who do not wish to kill any one, wish they had the power.
He who is too powerful, is still aiming at that degree of power which is unattainable.
Power never takes a back step — only in the face of more power.
I admit the desire. But do not tempt me. Power has a way of revenging itself upon its usurpers.
Without his rod revers'd,
And backward mutters of dissevering power.
All who are at all familiar with history know that men will abuse power when they possess it.
There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.