Power Quotes

Because a thing is difficult for you, do not therefore suppose it to be beyond mortal power. On the contrary, if anything is possible and proper for man to do, assume that it must fall within your own capacity.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations? Book Six

Lust of power burns more fiercely than all the passions combined.

Blessing Irish

The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.

William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams, Journal, 1772

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

Edward De Bono

Wealth may be an ancient thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty.

James Russell Lowell

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.

Shirley MacLaine

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Aristotle, Physics

To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.

Tryon Edwards

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money.

Mark Twain

O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us. O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.

Robert Burns, Poem "To a Louse" - Verse 8

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Sell not liberty to purchase power.

Benjamin Franklin

The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.

William Shakespeare

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.

Edward Bulwer - Lytton

I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought What the hell good would that do.

Ronnie Shakes

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 3, 1887.

Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.

Samuel Smiles

Either you think - - Or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

F Scott

No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.

Michael Pritchard

Be bold and mighty powers will come to your aid.

Basil King

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Albert Einstein, Telegram, 24 May 1946

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Thomas Jefferson

It is destruction to the weak man to attempt to imitate the powerful.

Phaedrus

The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.

Johannes Meister Eckhart

It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is simple patience.

Horace Bushnell

Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.

William Carleton

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947

Politics is the science of getting more power than anyone deserves to have.

Kirk Brothers, The Revolutionary Right

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action.

Midge Decto

In this world no one rules by love if you are but amiable, you are no hero to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

John Henry Newman

The power of one is above all things The power to believe in yourself Often well beyond any latent ability previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, The body is simply the means it uses.

Bryce Courtenay

I see knowledge increasing and human power increasing. I see ever - Increasing possibilities before life, And I see no limits set to it at all, Existence impresses me as a perpetual dawn. Our lives, as I apprehend, are great in expectations.

H. G. Wells

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

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate their subject matters.

B. F. Skinne

We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.

Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Albert Einstein