Power Quotes

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Nadia Boulange

Knowledge is power. Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est.

Sir Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacr?. De H? resibus. (1597)

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half - Blood Prince, 2005

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

Seneca

Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.

Dr. Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

William Hazlitt

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Erich Fromm

He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.

Plato

Money is the most egalitarian force in society. It confers power on whoever holds it.

Roger Sta

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow, - - He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.

Johann von Goethe

To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective.

Liz Smith

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Stewart L. Udall, commencement address, Dartmouth College, June 13, 1965

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

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.

Geoffrey F. Abert

Whatever you fear most has no power - It is your fear that has the power.

Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine

The people of the South have rejected the constitutional amendment, and therefore we will march upon them and force them to adopt it at the point of the bayonet, and establish military power over them until they do adopt it.

John Whitehead

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

We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.

William Fullbright

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

Juvenal

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Lyndon B. Johnson

A friend in power is a friend lost.

Henry Adams

Nature is at work.. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

David Seabury

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia

I repeat... that all power is a trust that we are accountable for its exercise that from the people, and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have been called the most powerful woman in the world, but I have on occasion lacked even the power of speech, because although we have crossed the threshold into a new century, there are still too many questions for which we have no answers.

Madeleine K. Albright, Farewell Remarks at U. S. Department of State; January 19, 2001; Washington, DC

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon? laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution? these can lift at a colossal humbug? push it a little? weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, chapter 10 (1916)

Being powerful is a lot like being a woman: If you have to tell someone that you are, invariably, you are not.

Margaret Thatche

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

Do you want to be a power in the world Then be yourself.

Ralph Waldo Trine

Never underestimate the power of passion.

Eve Sawye

If a rhinoceros were to enter this resteraunt now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I would be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.

G. K. Chesterton

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Man has responsiblity, not power. Tuscarora.

American Indian Prove

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

John Howe

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - - This is of the essence of leadership.

Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest of human creature that walks.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich