“Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours.”

— Maria Edgeworth

"An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification" (1795); Tales and Novels, vol. 1, p. 206.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours." by Maria Edgeworth?

Maria Edgeworth photo

Maria Edgeworth 16

Irish writer 1768–1849

Related quotes

“Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 6, “Guns Under the Table” (p. 394)

“It will make a weak man mighty;
It will make a mighty man fall.
It will fill your heart and hands;
Or leave you with nothing at all.
It's the eyes for the blind
And legs for the lame.
It is love for hate,
And pride for shame.That's the power of the gospel.
That's the power of the gospel.
That's the power of the mighty power.
That's the power of the gospel.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

Power of the Gospel.
Song lyrics, Fight for Your Mind (1995)

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
1790s

“It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 4

“The particular thing about science is to combine that [the dreams of obtaining power] with a retreat from the world. Other people want to obtain power by going out into the world, but the scientist really wants to obtain power by retreating from the world.”

Max Delbrück (1906–1981) biophysicist

Interview with Max Delbruck (1978), p. 88. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California.

“I ask... What would they do if every nation had unlimited electrical power-power for the taking-power costing nothing to obtain and available to all men equally?”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958)

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Section 2, paragraph 30.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage…”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XII, sec. 143
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

“Have you noticed that the people who actually make the laws, the people in power, never make laws for themselves?”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Postscript", p. 153.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

“The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: (1845), p. 112

Related topics