Power Quotes

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

Sir Winston Churchill

Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.

Lincoln Steffens

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation? s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

John F. Kennedy, Amherst College, Oct 26, 1963 - Source JFK Library, Boston, Mass.

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Yale University

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted and pure love without power is destroyed.

Reinhold Niebuh

Strength, courage and power do not exclude kindness, understanding and consideration. You can be strong and kind; you can be courageous and understanding; you can be powerful and considerate.

Linda R. Dominguez, How to Shine at Work, (McGraw - Hill)

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God or Satan is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window.

Stephen King

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.

Beatrix Potte

Without relationships, no matter how much wealth, fame, power, prestige and seeming success by the standards and opinions of the world one has, happiness will constantly eluded him.

Sidney Madwed

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

Dedication and responsibility, Far beyond the laws governed by man, Releases the power within you, To attain all the wisdom of the universe.

Christine Lane

Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion by maintained by it.

Germaine Gree

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only a novel... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions... that laws were like cobwebs, - - For that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.

Laertius Diogenes

The moment that any of us begins to trade principle for approval we give up our power.

Dennis Kucinich

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

James Madison

Better than power over all the earth, better than going to heaven and better than dominion over the worlds is the joy of the man who enters the river of life that leads to Non - Being.

The Dhammapada

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

Mark Twain

Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.

Helen Kelle

Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

James A. Garfield

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Knowledge is power.

Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

George Orwell

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

W. Somerset Maugham

Refrain from doing ill for one all powerful reason, lest our children should copy our misdeeds we are all to prone to imitate whatever is base and depraved.

Juvenal

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.

Brenda Ueland

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.

Sir B. Brodie

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.

Phillips Brooks

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

Honore de Balzac