“The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.”

— Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 235

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

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Simone Weil 193

French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist 1909–1943

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“We have to understand who we are and where we fit in the natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions. They tell us that it is power, but it is not power. They may have all the guns and they may have all the racist laws and judges, and they may control all the money, but that is not power. These are imitations of power and they are only ‘power’ because in our minds we allow it to be power.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

"We are Power" speech (1980)

“The effects of subunit power on organizational decision making and the bases of subunit power are examined in a large midwestern state university. It is hypothesized that subunits acquire power to the extent that they provide resources critical to the organization and that power affects resource allocations within organizations in so far as the resource is critical to the subunits and scarce within the organization. Departmental power is found to be most highly correlated with the department's ability to obtain outside grants and contracts, with national prestige and the relative size of the graduate program following closely in importance. Power is used most in the allocation of graduate university fellowships, the most critical and scarce resource, and is unrelated to the allocation of summer faculty fellowships, the least critical and scarce resource.”

Gerald R. Salancik (1943–1996) American organizational theorist

Gerald R. Salancik, and Jeffrey Pfeffer. "The bases and use of power in organizational decision making: The case of a university." Administrative Science Quarterly (1974): 453-473; p. 454; Abstract.

“Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken —”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter from Abigail to John Adams, Braintree, May, 7, 1776.
Context: I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken — and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.

“You must be very scrupulous not to gather power in to the center just because you can do it. Power corrupts, that’s the basic law of politics. Maybe the only law.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 3, “A New Constitution” (p. 156)

“People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Speech in Boston (2002)

“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Source: Cry, The Beloved Country

“There’s no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

@femfreq (Nov 14, 2014) https://web.archive.org/web/20150403150541/https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/533445611543363585
Twitter

“The struggle is lost … once the logic of power becomes the logic of the revolutionary process, once the negative of refusal is converted into the positive of power-building. … If we revolt against capitalism, it is not because we want a different system of power, it is because we want a society in which power relations are dissolved. You cannot build a society of non-power relations by conquering power. Once the logic of power is adopted, the struggle against power is already lost.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

“It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power, the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Variant: It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.
Source: Invisible Monsters

“The difficulties in economic life arise mainly because men forget divine power”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter V, Reaction And Revolution, p. 220

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