Quotes about power

page 18

“Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.”

“For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.”

“To confide is sometime to deliver into a person's power”

“Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the 'other self" is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.”

“Books, I found, had the power to make time
stand still, retreat or fly into the future.”

“Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.”

“Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”

“Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were executed because of the unsettling, threatening power of their souls, which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words.”

“What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?”

“Nor did I need anyone's pity, but I would accept it with grace, because I have been well trained. Rudeness was a sign of weakness. Grace stemmed from power, the powere to accept anything and move on.”

“Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me”

“The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.”

“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“Power without guilt, love without doubt….”

“The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.”

“Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.”

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

“I think it’s more like a shirt that says, ‘I’m going to have to end this date early so I can go prepare my Power Point presentation”

“every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer…”

“We ordinary people might lack your great speed or your X-Ray vision, Superman, but never underestimate the power of the human mind. We carry the most dangerous weapon on Earth inside these thick skulls of ours.”

“It sounds silly I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie. Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.”

“It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”

“We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.”

“Before embarking on important undertakings sit quietly calm your senses and thoughts and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit.”

“There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.”

“Consequently, if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan's power comes from God and so that Satan is simply God's child, and that we are God's children also. There are no children of Satan, really.”

“Leap out the window, my inner Tigress cried. You aren't ready to face such a powerful Tiger. I frowned. I thought a true Tigress never backed down from a fight. Don't you know anything? When she's in heat, she avoids everything male. Now run!”

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”

“I have learned the power of surviving.”

“When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.”

“Congratulations," I tell her with a slight bow. "I hope you and your power trip will be very happy together. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to go.”

“Strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.”

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”

“In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.”

“When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.”

“If you've made your own hell, then only you have the power to escape it.”

“Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”

“I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

“I call it Andskoti, the Adversary. It is woven with the most powerful paradoxes in the Nine Worlds—Wi-Fi with no lag, a politician’s sincerity, a printer that prints, healthy deep-fried food, and an interesting grammar lecture!”

“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”

“The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”

“Powerful people have no regrets.”

“Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?”

“People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”

“When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.”

“There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing so strange.”

“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.”

“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”

“If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.”

“To operate within the matrix of
power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.”

“The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that.”

“Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking some day.”

“from Bill Clinton speech-
People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power…”

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring -
What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here - that life
exists and identity,
that the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.”

“The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truths is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.”

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”

“Percy grunted. ‘Probably something to do with that creep Octavian. Maybe he was so bad at telling the future that he broke Apollo’s powers.”

“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”

“But who is more ignorant? The man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its awesome power?”

“The key to power, then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.”

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change”

“The individual is the product of power.”

“Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.”

“How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.”

“The roles we play in each other's lives are only as powerful as the trust and connection between us--the protection, safety, and caring we are willing to share.”

“Never underestimate the value of knowing another's language. It can be far more powerful than swords and arrows.”

“Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.”

“I don’t want my thoughts to die with me, I want to have done something. I’m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning.”

“What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.”

“Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.”

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”

“Character is power.”

“It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.”

“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.”

“The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.”

“Blood is a powerful thing”

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to
self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt,
that's real power.”

“Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.”

“They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.”

“Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.”

“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”

“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.”

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives … Animal products are the main culprit in what is killing us. We can absolutely live better lives without them.”

“Girls had to believe in anything but their own power, because if girls knew what they could do, imagine what they might.”

“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”

“I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!”

“It is because good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that, Antonio. The smallest bit of good can stand against all the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant.”

“And after a while… I mean, how do you choose? Who gets to live? Part of life is that… well, some people have to die. My powers aren't a prescription you can get filled as needed.”

“Anyone who said power was not addictive had never really experienced it.”

“How sweetly he came to her, she thought. Even with his bulk and power, he came to her… sweetly.”

“The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.”

“Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.”

“Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.”

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”

“Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God, his existence, powers, love, and promises.”

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

“Believe me, when I say;
There are no two powers
That command the soul.
One is God
The other is the tide.
-Anon
From the novel Abarat”

“Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous".”