
“To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.”
Entre Nous, p. 2
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Power: A Radical View (1974)
“To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.”
Entre Nous, p. 2
My Years As Prime Minister (2007)
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16
Context: The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power; to elevate this power is the only way to counteract this want; but to do this presupposes the exercise of that power, and this exercise presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Only it is clear we cannot call it giving freedom, when fetters are unloosed which are not felt as such by him who wears them. But of no man on earth—however neglected by nature, and however degraded by circumstances—is this true of all the bonds which oppress and enthral him. Let us undo them one by one, as the feeling of freedom awakens in men’s hearts, and we shall hasten progress at every step. There may still be great difficulties in being able to recognize the symptoms of this awakening. But these do not lie in the theory so much as in its execution, which, it is evident, never admits of special rules, but in this case, as in every other, is the work of genius alone.
From his speech given on 28 November 1960 at laying the foundation-stone of the building of the Law Institute of India, in: p. 15
Presidents of India, 1950-2003
“Crowley wanted to be a magician because he wanted power -- power over other people.”
Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 157
Letter to Lucy Martin Donnelly, February 10, 1916
1910s
“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 27 (1954 edition).
Context: We must distinguish between military and political power.
Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. It gives the former control over certain actions of the latter through the influence which the former exert over the latter's minds. That influence may be exerted through orders, threats, persuasion, or a combination of any of these.