“Those who rise to the top of organizations, who live to direct others, to wield power, are inevitably afflicted by weak egos, by a need to prove themselves. This explains why they are so easily frightened and so easily manipulated. And why they are so dangerous.”

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 5 (p. 65)

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 "Those who rise to the top of organizations, who live to direct others, to wield power, are inevitably afflicted by weak…" by Jack McDevitt?

Jack McDevitt125

American novelist, Short story writer 1935

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

Westminster Gazette (1893)

“Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)

“In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other.”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

“What is needed is a noticeable unnoticeable style,… a directness of speech that seems to one judging easily imitable, to one trying it nothing less so.”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

The Problem of Style, Fawcett, New York 1966
General

“The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Two, pp.. 79

“and as they, when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with anyone else whatever.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Diogenes Laertius

“It's not people in bands, is it? Why do people who take drugs, why are they in bands? 'Cos they're trying to prove themselves. To make themselves blank and numb and not able to communicate with other people.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

October 2002, NME (New Musical Express); when asked why people in bands take drugs
Drugs

“This was incredibly foolish. To live just to die. And to die so easily.”

Why the lucky stiff American computer programmer

Collected PDFs (2013)

“Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Portable Nietzsche

“Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves, and so it cannot so easily be fixed with a single number.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

with Richard Guerrero, "Two Plus Two Equals One: Individuals Emerge from Bacterial Communities" in Gaia 2: Emergence : the New Science of Becoming ed. William Irwin Thompson (1991).

“Those who rise to the top of organizations, who live to direct others, to wield power, are inevitably afflicted by weak egos, by a need to prove themselves. This explains why they are so easily frightened and so easily manipulated. And why they are so dangerous.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jack McDevitt125

Related quotes

Related topics