Quotes about power (10000 quotes, page 31)

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life , Wisdom , Women , Men

“he [agent Daly] conducts his office as being a whole Dominion Government, Indian Agent, Indian Cheif and Council, all into one … the Agent appears as taking too much advantage of his powers over the Chief and council and causing a considerable strife an [animosity] amoung the Indians of this Reserve … foiling the labors of the chief and members of the council, discrediting those who assist to maintain good government of the Band.”

Francis Pegahmagabow (1891–1952) World War I sniper

[harv, Brownlie, Robin, A fatherly eye: Indian agents, government power, and Aboriginal resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939, 2003, 2003, University of Toronto Press, 9780195417845], p. 153

Appearance

“I should be blind if I did not perceive that some power as strong as the universe is parting us. What this power is, what it is called, I do not know. I know only that if I knelt down, beat my head on the floor, prayed, and cried out for mercy, I might move a mountain sooner than move that power. As nothing now could part me from Aniela but death, she must die. This may be very logical, but I do not consent to part from her.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

20 November
Without Dogma (1891)

Death , Mountain , Strong , Universe

“Our vulnerability [ to ressentiment], is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone “has the right” to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

[paraphrasing the view of Max Scheler], p. 25.
The Art of Life (2008)

Education

“Normally man’s mind is composed only of a consciousness of his immediate needs, which is to say that this consciousness at any moment can be defined as ‘’his awareness of his own power to satisfy those needs.’’ He thinks in terms of what he intends to do in half an hour’s time, a day’s time, a month’s time an no more. He never asks himself: what are the ‘’limits’’ of my powers? In a sense, he is like a man who has a fortune is the bank, who never asks himself, How much money have I got, but only, Have I enough for a pound of cheese, a new tie, etc.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Six, The Question of Identity

Money , Thinking , Sense , Time

“There's a great phrase from Eric Jantsch … and he says, "these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting at their marks". I love that phrase because you get that … the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right. But if the conditions are right, then these self-organizing dynamics leap to it. So I think it's something like that, that the possibility for sentience has always been there but has been waiting for a chance to really display.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

MeaningofLife.tv interview, 2007

Love , Thinking , Universe , Water

“The poem, through candor, brings back a power again
That gives a candid kind to everything.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract

“We know that the simplistic, almost childlike naivety or perhaps the intellectual senility of the architects of this concept have not taken into consideration the practical difficulties and impracticalities of sharing power for the sake of sharing power in our society with political parties that are diametrical opposed to each other.”

Manasa Tugia Fijian politician

Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003

Naivety

“We live in stormy and unsettled times. Hence we may confer a benefit, not only on ourselves, but on others, by diverting attention from the exciting circumstances of the present day—from the disheartening eccentricities of a literature which meanders in a thousand frivolous directions—to the calm regions where the inner man, self-examined, submits himself to moral treatment. Here our connection with things, our object, our duty, become clear; and, while we quietly separate ourselves from a world which is unable to assure us of anything, we feel that the joy we thought lost again returns, and that a second innocence spreads its clear and tranquillizing light over human existence. The child may amuse himself with childish rhymes. Man should find his recreation in reflecting on his relation to the things of this life. To all has this power been vouchsafed; by all should it be exercised.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

Life , World , Feeling , Exercises

“Specialization, as has been noted, is the confining of human activity to a limited field. In industrial work this means the limitation of an enterprise to a portion of the field and to the production of a limited line of products. But even when the line of products is limited, there are usually many types that are possible in that line and an infinite number of sizes of any one type. Thus suppose a manufacturer specializes in the manufacture of men's shoes. Here there is no limit to the types that may be produced and no limit to the number of sizes of any type since no two feet are exactly alike. Again a manufacturer may specialize on the production of motors between the sizes, say, of one-half horse-power and twenty horse-power. Here again many types are possible and an infinite number of sizes for each type. But it has been shown that one of the essentials of cheap production is quantity, and for a given total output the greatest number of each element entering into the product is secured when the numbers of types and sizes are a minimum.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 41-42

Men , Shoe , Horse

“Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference…””

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Evil

“Yes, I believe in prayer, as a mystery which can endow one with more power perhaps than any other spiritual mystery, yet a mystery that cannot be exposited to a point where it is not a mystery.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

I Believe in Prayer - - How Prayer helps me The Dial Press 1955
Prose

“Dialogue in Hell:
inscrutable…They never know if some enterprise already prepared will not descend on them from one day to the other.
A Prince whose power is founded upon a democratic base, must speak carefully, albeit popularly. If necessary he must not fear to speak like a demagogue, for after all he is the people, and he must have its passions…
You asked me a moment ago if I knew self-denial, if I would sacrifice myself for my people, relinquish the throne if necessary; now you have my answer, I can relinquish it as a martyr.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

People , Fear , Hell , Passion

“What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

In the Name of Jesus (1989)

Love , Life , God , People

“Don't terrorize. Organize. Don't burn. Give kids a chance to learn … The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That's Black Power.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

Statement on national TV during the 1968 riots in Washington, DC after the Martin Luther King assassination. http://likethedew.com/2010/04/26/james-brown-and-his-changing-times-rockin-the-white-house-8

Education , Problem , Learning , Chance

“He had a power; in his eye
There was a quenchless energy,
A spirit that could dare
The deadliest form that Death could take,
And dare it for the daring's sake.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Crescentius from The London Literary Gazette (19th July 1823) Execution of Crescentius
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Death

“You are going to have to struggle with something that you have never struggled with before. I am talking to you about it now. I am talking to you about the fact that your whole life to date has been in an effort to control what you see as being finite. The whole of life for human beings, predicated on the idea that one must acquire power in order to overpower conditions that will not give them what they say they need in order to have a fixed sense of security and well-being.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

Secrets of Being Unstoppable

Life , Idea , Sense , Effort

“At the end of the Civil War, the "Slave Power" had been destroyed, free-labor Republicanism was triumphant, and the freed slave was poised on the verge of assuming an equal place in American society with every other citizen. Fifteen years later, the one-time slaveholders were back in control of the South, free-labor Republicanism was coping with the first stresses of mass industrialization in its own Northern backyard, and the freedmen were consigned to an economic peonage that offered little practical improvement on enslavement. It began to seem that a great opportunity had been bobbled away.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

War , Time

“I can't help thinking that the whole of the Vietnam War was the blackest comedy that ever was, because it showed the way you can't teach humanity anything. We'd all learnt in the rest of the world that you can't now go around and put out your hand and, across seas, exercise power; but the poor Americans had not learned that and they tried to do it. The remoteness of Americans from German attack had made them feel confident. They didn't really believe that anything could reach out and kill them. Americans are quite unconscious now that we look on them as just as much beaten as we are. They're quite unconscious of that. They have always talked of Vietnam as if by getting out they were surrendering the prospect of victory, as if they were being noble by renouncing the possibility of victory. But they couldn't have had a victory. They couldn't possibly have won.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 13

War , World , Way , Feeling

“From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago

Men , Question

“I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Remarks made at the meeting of the German warlords at Advanced General Headquarters at Avesnes (11 August 1918), quoted in John Terraine, To Win A War: 1918 The Year of Victory (London: Cassell, 2003), p. 121
1910s

War

“But such their power who rule with tyrant sway,
Whom most they loath the people most obey.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Ma 'l populo facea come i più fanno,
Ch'ubbidiscon più a quei che più in odio hanno.
Canto XXXVII, stanza 104 (tr. J. Hoole)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

People

“The power to change your life lies in the simplest of steps.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 53

Life , Change

“As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

People , Communication

“The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"Love and Marriage"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

Fools

“Hitherto, crowded countries…like the United Kingdom and Western Europe, have had this outstanding vulnerability to carry. But the hydrogen bomb, with its vast range of destruction and the even wider area of contamination, would be effective also against nations whose population hitherto has been so widely dispersed over large land areas as to make them feel that they were not in any danger at all. They, too, become highly vulnerable … Here again we see the value of deterrents, immune against surprise and well understood by all persons on both sides—I repeat "on both sides"—who have the power to control events. That is why I have hoped for a long time for a top level conference where these matters could be put plainly and bluntly from one friendly visitor to the conference to another. Then it may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1955-03-01/debates/ae81a20b-68e7-42d0-8cbb-d9589f53fc0d/Defence#1899 in the House of Commons (1 March 1955)
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Hope , Feeling , Time , Personality

“[…] although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to coöperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Life , God , World , Optimism

“In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers, is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 64

Decision , Sense

“And so it is, seven years nearly after the War, that we yet see this prolonged and intensified depression, and this horrible figure of unemployment…We stand to-day at a point where, roughly speaking, one out of every ten of the insured population is out of work…But there is no direct remedy from the State alone. There can be no direct remedy by private men alone. Nothing can be done unless we can all pull together with a will. And I am—and I speak seriously—quite profoundly thankful that the Labour Party have been in office, and for this reason: that they now know that they, no more than any other Government, have been able to produce a panacea that would remedy unemployment. And in their hearts they must admit that they have no remedy which can be guaranteed to cure this disease and at the same time maintain unimpaired the international position and power of the British Empire.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (5 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp 30-31.
1925

Men , War , Disease , Time

“Some think I have lost that poetical ardour and fire 'tis said I once had- the fact is, perhaps I have; but, instead of that, I hope I shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to George Keats (September 21, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)

Hope , Thinking

“I see no reason why such a body should have any power that leads to supergovernment, or that in any way minimizes the very essential principle of nationalism upon which our patriotism and progress is founded.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Comment about the League of Nations in 1922 Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy: Department of Commerce Policy, 1921-1928 https://books.google.com/books?id=rinywBbGac4C&pg=PA27

Way

“You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Garden of Tortures

Life , People , World , Sadness

“[one part of the show is] a reenactment of a powerful experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to look at how normal people can commit atrocious acts, simply because they’re following orders. Milgram’s parents were Jewish refugees in World War II and his pioneering work speaks volumes about the nature of responsibility.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: The Heist (2006)

War , People , World , Nature

“I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the CROSS, the CROSS — God's hammer, God's fire.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Love , God , World , Parting

“But I venture to submit, my lord, that the consideration which the people of the Western countries receive in consequence of their voting power should be available to us, in matters of finance at any rate, through an “intelligent anticipation” – to use a phrase of Your Lordship’s- of our reasonable wishes on the part of the government.”

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915) social and political leader during the Indian Independence Movement

He commented criticizing the heavy taxation that was creating surpluses and the need to have a say in the matter by the representatives of the people. Pages=696-97
Sources of Indian Tradition

People , Intelligence , Parting , Country

“1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Whither Socialism?

Source: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

Books , Way , Communication , Failure

“When one listens to your speeches it sounds as if you had always fought against capitalism. The truth is that it was you who gave all the power to capitalism. In this republic capitalism has grown as it had never before. You can think about the old state as you will, one thing is certain: it was not as rotten as the one you brought about! …
What shall one say when Reich president Ebert in his letters addresses the Jewish scoundrel Barmat as "My dear Barmat" and closes with the greeting "Yours Ebert"? Despite all the veneration that I feel for this man, whom by the way I respect more as a master saddle-maker than as a Reich president, I simply have to be astonished. Gentlemen, where is the "beauty and dignity?"”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Wenn man Euch reden hört, dann habt Ihr immer den Kapitalismus bekämpft. In Wirklichkeit habt Ihr den Kapitalismus erst in den Sattel gehoben. In dieser Republik hat sich der Kapitalismus ausgewachsen wie niemals zuvor. Mag man über den alten Staat denken wir man will, eines steht fest: so verlumpt war er nicht wie der, den Ihr uns gebracht habt! …
Was soll man dazu sagen, wenn ein Reichspräsident Ebert den jüdischen Schurken Barmat in Briefen mit "Mein lieber Barmat" anredet und ihn am Schlusse mit "Dein Ebert" grüßt? Bei aller Ehrfurcht, die ich vor dem Mann habe, den ich übrigens als Sattlermeister weit mehr schätze denn als Reichspräsident, muss ich mich doch sehr wundern. Meine Herren, wo ist da "Schönheit und Würde"?
01/23/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Truth , Beauty , Way , Feeling

“To rule means to exercise power, and only he who possesses power can exercise it. This direct connection of power and rule forms the fundamental truth of all politics and the key to all history.”

Ludwig von Rochau (1810–1873) German politician

Mittel Energie auszuüben und nur ihn anzuordnen der Energie besitzt kann sie ausüben. Dieser direkte Anschluß der Energie und der Richtlinie bildet die grundlegende Wahrheit aller Politik und den Schlüssel zu aller Geschichte.
As quoted in The German Idea of Freedom : History of a Political Tradition (1972) by Leonard Krieger, p. 354

Truth , Exercises , History

“The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

From Wichita Vortex Sutra (1966)

War

“After Aurangzeb’s death when Muslim power started to disintegrate, the Sufi scholar Shah Waliullah (1703-1763) wrote to the Afghan King Ahmad Shah Abdali, inviting him to invade India to help the Muslims. The letter said: “…In short the Moslem community is in a pitiable condition. All control of the machinery of the government is in the hands of the Hindus because they are the only people who are capable and industrious. Wealth and prosperity are concentrated in their hands, while the share of Moslems is nothing but poverty and misery… At this time you are the only king who is powerful, farsighted and capable of defeating the enemy forces. Certainly it is incumbent upon you to march to India, destroy Maratha domination and rescue weak and old Moslems from the clutches of non-Moslems. If, Allah forbid, domination by infidels continues, Moslems will forget Islam and within a short time, become such a nation that there will be nothing left to distinguish them from non-Moslems.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Shah Waliullah ke Siyasi Maktubat, ed. by Khaliq Ahmad Nizami reproduced in English in Khalid Bin Sayeed’s Pakistan: The Formative Phase, Pakistan Publishing House, Karachi, p. 2. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8
From his letters

Death , People , Communication , Time

“It is with considerable reluctance that I criticize the monetarists, because, though I consider their proposed monetary policy unfeasible, they are after all much more nearly right in their assumptions and prescriptions than the majority of present academic economists. The simplistic form of the quantity theory of money that they hold is not tenable; but they are overwhelmingly right in insisting on how much "money matters," and they are right in insisting that in most circumstances, and over the long run, it is the quantity of money that is most influential in determining the purchasing power of the monetary unit. Other things being equal, the more dollars that are issued, the smaller becomes the value of each individual dollar. So at the moment the monetarists are more effective opponents of further inflation than the great bulk of politicians and even putative economists who still fail to recognize this basic truth.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money , Truth

“We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. … If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia which was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_368 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement
The 1930s

Loss , Country

“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Individuality http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873).
Context: The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.

God , People , Truth

“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to William Short http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation (1825)
1820s

People , Fear , Exercises

“Functional communication is only the outer layer of the one- dimensional universe in which man is trained to target—to translate the negative into the positive so that he can continue to function, reduced but fit and reasonably well. The institutions of free speech and freedom of thought do not hamper the mental coordination with the established reality. What is taking place is a sweeping redefinition of thought itself, of its function and content. The coordination of the individual with his society reaches into those layers of the mind where the very concepts are elaborated which are designed to comprehend the established reality. These concepts are taken from the intellectual tradition and translated into operational terms—a translation which has the effect of reducing the tension between thought and reality by weakening the negative power of thought.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 104

Communication , Reality , Freedom , Universe

“Create the conditions for people to criticize the Government, to monitor the government, and at the same time to give full play to the supervisory role of the news media, so that the power to run under sunshine.(”

Wen Jiabao (1942) former Premier of the People's Republic of China

Wen Jiabao (2010) cited in: Government Work Report, National People's Congress cited in 如何「讓權力在陽光下運行」, 28 September 2008, BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/china/2010/03/100308_china_media_liu.shtml,

People , Time

“There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Help

“In the Name of God, the Most Exalted, the Most Holy. All praise and glory befitteth the sacred and glorious court of the sovereign Lord, Who from everlasting hath dwelt, and unto everlasting will continue to dwell within the mystery of His Own divine Essence, Who from time immemorial hath abided and will forever continue to abide within His transcendent eternity, exalted above the reach and ken of all created beings. The sign of His matchless Revelation as created by Him and imprinted upon the realities of all beings, is none other but their powerlessness to know Him. The light He hath shed upon all things is none but the splendour of His Own Self. He Himself hath at all times been immeasurably exalted above any association with His creatures. He hath fashioned the entire creation in such wise that all beings may, by virtue of their innate powers, bear witness before God on the Day of Resurrection that He hath no peer or equal and is sanctified from any likeness, similitude or comparison. He hath been and will ever be one and incomparable in the transcendent glory of His divine being and He hath ever been indescribably mighty in the sublimity of His sovereign Lordship. No one hath ever been able befittingly to recognize Him nor will any man succeed at any time in comprehending Him as is truly meet and seemly, for any reality to which the term ‘being’ is applicable hath been created by the sovereign Will of the Almighty, Who hath shed upon it the radiance of His Own Self, shining forth from His most august station. He hath moreover deposited within the realities of all created things the emblem of His recognition, that everyone may know of a certainty that He is the Beginning and the End, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Maker and the Sustainer, the Omnipotent and the All-Knowing, the One Who heareth and perceiveth all things, He Who is invincible in His power and standeth supreme in His Own identity, He Who quickeneth and causeth to die, the All-Powerful, the Inaccessible, the Most Exalted, the Most High. Every revelation of His divine Essence betokens the sublimity of His glory, the loftiness of His sanctity, the inaccessible height of His oneness and the exaltation of His majesty and power. His beginning hath had no beginning other than His Own firstness and His end knoweth no end save His Own lastness.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

I, 1
The Persian Bayán

God , Fashion , Reality , Light

“We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. The events that led to the Egyptian army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power. I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge. This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/07/egypt-army-morsi-tony-blair 6 July, 2013 Blair justifying the Egyptians army actions on removing Morsi.
2010s

People , Democracy , Support , Strong

“Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the sources of social action—its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money's sake. They want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what it will control—for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power.”

Theodore Dreiser book The Financier

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXV

Money , People , Way , Sense

“Freud describes the neurotic personality of the late nineteenth century as one suffering from fragmentation – that is, from repression of instinctual drives, blocking off of awareness, loss of autonomy, weakness and passivity of the ego, together with the various neurotic symptoms which result from this fragmentation. “Kierkegaard-who wrote the only known book before Freud specifically devoted to the problem of anxiety-analyzes not only anxiety but particularly the depression and despair which result from the individual’s self-estrangement, an estrangement he proceeds to clarify in its different forms and degrees of severity. Nietzsche proclaims ten years before Freud’s first book that the disease of contemporary man is that “his soul had gone stale” he is – he describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, self-hatred, hostility and aggression. Freud did not know Kierkegaard’s work, but he regarded Nietzsche as one of the authentically great men of all time.””

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Discovery of Being (1983), p. 60-61

Men , Hostility , Books , Disease

“He never asks the orchestra to do anything which contradicts the players' feeling of what the music signifies or what the printed notes of the score actually mean in plain musical language. To his credit he does not pretend to omniscience. When a certain progression of programs with the Philharmonic decreed that he conduct the Brahms Fourth Symphony two seasons ago, he disavowed intensive rehearsals with the simple statement to the orchestra: "Gentlemen, you know the work better than I do." Both the compliment and the attitude endeared themselves so much to the orchestra that they literally forgot themselves in a mass effort to justify his statement—and, as one of those who heard the performance, I can testify that they delivered one of the most powerful and integrated interpretations of the score that New York has experienced in years.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

On conductor George Enescu, in "Music in Aspic," Harper's Magazine (October 1939) and A Smattering of Ignorance (1940); as quoted in "Lightning Wit Plays On American Musical Scene; Oscar Levant Answers Unspoken Request for 'Information, Please' With Uncensored Comments on Exalted Persons" by Ray C. B. Brown, in The Washington Post (January 14, 1940), p. E4

Music , Feeling , Effort , Season

“With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one’s logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

On why entertainment celebrities tend to favor the Democratic Party, as quoted in "Ted Nugent blasts Matt Damon on Palin" in The Christian Science Monitor (18 September 2008) http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/09/16/ted-nugent-blasts-matt-damon-on-palin/

Feeling

“Terrible things have happened. The de Witts are killed.”
“Is this so terrible? They have been your foes from the moment of your birth, and though out of power would have continued to conspire against you.”
“Sagi, if we must needs kill our opponents then civilization is a chimera. Governments are formed so that men may disagree without murder, and I tell you true, I loathe a mob more than anything.”
“They acted out of love for you.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

“That does not comfort me.”
Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 15 (p. 195)

Love , Men , Birth

“We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

As quoted in "US TV industry plans June ad campaign on decency" Reuters news agency (24 April 2006) http://www.entertainment-news.org/breaking/50538/us-tv-industry-plans-june-ad-campaign-on-decency.html

Home , Parent

“What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.”

Jacques Attali (1943) French economist

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (Wadsworth, 1996, ISBN 0-028-64581-2)

Music , Communication

“Theories of modernisation are cod-scientific projections of Enlightenment values. They tell us nothing about the future. But they do help us to understand the present. They show the lingering power of the Christian faith that history is a moral drama, a tale of progress or redemption, in which - despite everything we know of it - morality rules the world.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: The myth of modernisation (p. 174)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Faith , History , Understanding

“That which we persist in doing becomes easy to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do has increased.”

Heber J. Grant (1856–1945) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Attributed to Grant in: Fred G. Taylor (1944) A saga of sugar. p. 197

Nature , Change

“Of all the forces that are exerted on us over our lifetime, at least for me, love has been the most powerful of all.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Love

“The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

223
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

Wisdom , God , Reading , Country

“Owing to the strength of this [the Navajo] tribe which numbered then not less than sixty or seventy thousand (60 or 70,000) souls embracing as it did some of those Indians who now call themselves 'Apaches' but who still speak the same language, and who are so alike, and to the fact that they inhabit a country equal to one-third of the whole Territory; that this section was a 'Terra Incognita' and that there is no portion of the American Continent so well adapted by nature for the peculiar style of warfare adopted by the Indians, it is not at all surprising that the many powerful campaigns made against them by the Spanish Government were entirely barren of results as to their subjugation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864) as quoted by Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History Vol. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=GUUOAAAAIAAJ (1917)

Soul , Nature , Country

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 266)

Way

“I answer that, It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in other works, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation. This can be made clear if we observe the mode of generation carried out in various living things. Some living things do not possess in themselves the power of generation, but are generated by some other specific agent, such as some plants and animals by the influence of the heavenly bodies, from some fitting matter and not from seed: others possess the active and passive generative power together; as we see in plants which are generated from seed; for the noblest vital function in plants is generation. Wherefore we observe that in these the active power of generation invariably accompanies the passive power. Among perfect animals the active power of generation belongs to the male sex, and the passive power to the female. And as among animals there is a vital operation nobler than generation, to which their life is principally directed; therefore the male sex is not found in continual union with the female in perfect animals, but only at the time of coition; so that we may consider that by this means the male and female are one, as in plants they are always united; although in some cases one of them preponderates, and in some the other. But man is yet further ordered to a still nobler vital action, and that is intellectual operation. Therefore there was greater reason for the distinction of these two forces in man; so that the female should be produced separately from the male; although they are carnally united for generation. Therefore directly after the formation of woman, it was said: "And they shall be two in one flesh"”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Gn. 2:24
I, q. 92, art. 1 (Whether the Woman should have been made in the first production of things?)
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Life , Sex , Time , Help

“Nor are liberal ideals alone sufficient: Ours is a practical people, to whom ideals furnish the theory of political action, upon which they want not only firm assurance, but also effective practice. They want programmes, but they want action to flow from them. They want constructive common sense. They want the development of the common will, not the views of a single individual. They are beginning to realize that words without action are the assassins of idealism. On the other side, they are equally disgusted with seeking for power by destructive criticism, demagoguery, specious promises and sham.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Excerpt from a statement to the New York Tribune concerning the 1920 Presidential campaign (29 April 1920)

People , Sense

“The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.”

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

(1847)

Way , Decision

“The first principle of a Keyes administration, it will apply in foreign policy, it will apply in domestic policy, it will apply everywhere. There is a God, and we are not him! I will not join the Clinton Democrats who worship government as their god! I will not join the Dole Republicans who worship power as their god! I will not join the Forbes Republicans who worship money as their god! I will stand where the founders of this nation stood, and I will give my respect and allegiance to the creator God who is the ground of justice and who is the ground of all our human rights!”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Miscellaneous
Source: Alan Keyes, January 27, 1996 at the Louisiana Republican Convention. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/96_01_27lagop.htm.

Money , God , Justice

“Whether looming over the land as a symbol of a ruler’s authority or providing a setting for displays of wealth and power in spectacular feasts and tournaments, castles made a visual statement about their owners. All ar chitecture has symbolic overtones, and the castle is a potent image.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 4 : The Castle as Symbol and Palace

Wealth

“But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Source: Out of the East, Books and Habits, p. 70.

Love , Happiness

“…the American people seemed to have no clearer idea than they. Indeed, the American people had no idea at all; they were wandering in a wilderness much more sandy than the Hebrews had ever trodden about Sinai; they had neither serpents nor golden calves to worship. They had lost the sense of worship; for the idea that they worshipped money seemed a delusion. Worship of money was an old-world trait; a healthy appetite akin to worship of the Gods, or to worship of power in any concrete shape; but the American wasted money more recklessly than any one ever did before; he spent more to less purpose than any extravagant court aristocracy; he had no sense of relative values, and knew not what to do with his money when he got it”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Money , God , People , World

“This is the essence of the problem. To Dan Rather and to a lot of other powerful members of the chattering class, that which is right of center is conservative. That which is left of center is middle of the road. No wonder they can't recognize their own bias.”

Bernard Goldberg (1945) American journalist

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (2001)

Problem

“Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

God , Religion , Way , Search

“Talk about a "higher consciousness" superior to reason naturally comforts persons who find mental exertion painful, and notions about transcendental powers naturally console persons who do not have the courage or stamina to confront the realities of a universe that was not made for man. These ideas, in the form in which they are peddled by Uspenski and Orage, are derived from the early Hindu mystics of the Vedas and Upanishads. They did reach a state of exalted consciousness -- by the use of what they called soma, which, as R. G. Weston has shown, was simply the Amanita muscaria, a mushroom that has been for millennia a prime source of religiosity.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Orage and New Age Consciousness", private letter, February 1977, published on National Vanguard http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=6657 (October 25, 2005)
1970s

Pain , Idea , Courage , Nature

“Power and money reign supreme in our nation today. Universities count for nothing, and scholarship and ideas count for even less. Love, truth, and sacrifice are meaningless concepts, while betrayal and collective amnesia are taken as a matter of course.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Love , Money , Truth , Idea

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution … taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Dependency

“He [Jesus] claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); … that injury done one’s neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (V, 24). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but the pure religion of reason must be the law’s interpreter, for taken according to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does not leave unnoticed, in his designations of the strait gate and the narrow way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow themselves in order to evade their true moral duty, holding themselves immune through having fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13). He further requires of these pure dispositions that they manifest themselves also in works (VII, 16) and, on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine that, through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His envoy, they will make up for their lack of good works and ingratiate themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he declares that they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16), and in a cheerful mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God (XIII, 31-33).”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men , God , Religion , Justice

“America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused — preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

Justice , History , Chance

“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester (Ch. 14)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Perfection

“Darwin himself told us in his last book (The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms) that we should never underestimate the power of worms on the move…. The inversion of a humble worm, especially when disturbed, may bring down empires. Shakespeare told us that "the smallest worm will turn being trodden on." And Cervantes wrote in his author's preface to Don Quixote that "even a worm when trod upon, will turn again." …Geoffrey, it seems, was correct after all - not in every detail, of course, but at least in basic vision and theoretical meaning. And the triumph of surprise, the inversion of nuttiness to apparent truth, stands as a premier example of the most exciting general development in evolutionary theory during our times.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 329-330
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Truth , Books , Time

“Modigliani's theory was a powerful searchlight on what was happening… It is the best explanation of what has actually been happening in the great swing of American life since the 1950's.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Paul Samuelson in: Louis Uchitelle. " Franco Modigliani, 85, Nobel-Winning Economist, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/obituaries/26MODI.html" in New York Times, September 26, 2003.
New millennium

Life

“O ye powers that search
The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts,
If I have done amiss, impute it not!
The best may err, but you are good.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act IV, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Search , Heart

“Nations are divided into "good"and "bad"-the enemy is all bad, one's own nation is of spotless virtue. Wars are either acts of God or acts of the other nations, which always catch us completely by surprise. To a student of international systems the national image even of respectable, intellectual, and powerful people seems naive and untrue. The patriotism of the sophisticated cannot be a simple faith. There is, however, in the course of human history a powerful and probably irreversible movement toward sophistication. We can wise up, but we cannot wise down, except at enormous cost in the breakdown of civilizations, and not even a major breakdown results in much loss of knowledge.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, National images and international systems, 1959, p. 131

God , War , People , Faith

“A government, a regime that is not willing to slaughter large numbers of its own citizens to stay in tyrannical power will lose power.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

“Women are not in control of their bodies; nature is. Ancient mythology, with its sinister archetypes of vampire and Gorgon, is more accurate than feminism about the power and terror of female sexuality.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 30

Women , Nature

“The different degree of light interference between blue and red also affords a power which we may be glad to avail ourselves, in some cases using the red where a very marked degree of lightening is desired, or blue where only a trifling difference is needed.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Fidelity to nature and justifiable untruth, p. 21

Light

“The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drives shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The world can't touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper-powerful electricity.”

Nick Cave book The Death of Bunny Munro

The Death of Bunny Munro (2009)
Books

Books , World , Cars , Way

“More and more violently, with the impotent rage of the wild beast, who wishes to maintain in the backyards of all her colonial possession, each and every sinecure upon which the American way of life was erected. Let them take heed, those sons of the Pentagon and of North American monopolies who until now have paraded their arrogance up down the lands of America… Cuba is no longer a solitary island… defended only by the vulnerable breasts of her sons… Cuba is now, in addition, a proud Caribbean island defended by the missiles of the greatest military power in history.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara (1968) by John Gerassi, p. 109-110

Life , Way , History , Rage

“It is a testimony to the power of education that classical mechanics could operate for so long under a mistaken conception. Teaching and research concentrated on integrable systems, each feeding the other, until in the end we had no longer the tools nor the interest for studying nonintegrable systems.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 4, From Computation To Geometry, p. 84.

Education , Study

“A man who does not know what has been thought by those who have gone before him is sure to set an undue value upon his own ideas—ideas which have perhaps been tried and found wanting. As accumulated learning stifles the mental powers, so original thinking has been known to bring about a puffy, unsubstantial mental condition.”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Source: Memoirs (1885), Chapter I, p. 78

Idea , Thinking , Learning

“If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this attractive virtue.”

Johannes Kepler book Astronomia nova

As quoted by Bryant, ibid.
Astronomia nova (1609)

“You carry the weapon. That's how they don't see it coming. You're the one. They talk about 'color blind or blind to your color.' You said it yourself. You don't send the Black Liberation Army into Wall Street to conduct an action. You don't send the American Indian Movement into downtown Seattle to conduct an action. Who do you send? You. With your beard shaved, your hair cut close and wearing a banker's suit. There's probably a whole lot more to it, you know that, but there is where you start. Who carries the front-end? Why is it always people of color carrying the weight on this, when people who are much more proximate in terms of acceptability to the centers of power, professing solidarity and principled nonviolence on the one hand, and critiquing the practice of those who are carrying the weight on the other. Why is that?”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

Discussion at the Seattle Independent Media Center http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=7592&nav=&, August 10, 2003

People , Color

“Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's peace and from his prevailing power, and a common result is that they feel overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, and defeated by a world operating with a take-no-prisoners approach.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , People , World , Peace

“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely desperate. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)

Soul , Nature

“Conscious of a strength which removes us from either fear or truculence, satisfied with dominions and resources which free us from lust of territory or empire, we see that our highest interest will be promoted by the prosperity and progress of our neighbors. We recognize that what has been accomplished here has largely been due to the capacity of our people for efficient cooperation. We shall continue prosperous at home and helpful abroad, about as we shall maintain and continually adapt to changing conditions the system under which we have come thus far. I mean our Federal system, distributing powers and responsibilities between the States and the National Government. For that is the greatest American contribution to the organization of government over great populations and wide areas. It is the essence of practical administration for a nation placed as ours is. It has become so commonplace to us, and a pattern by so many other peoples, that we do not always realize how great an innovation it was when first formulated, or how great the practical problems which its operation involves. Because of my conviction that some of these problems are at this time in need of deeper consideration, I shall take this occasion to try to turn the public mind in that direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People , Fear , Home , Problem

“In the United States you're not allowed to talk about class differences. In fact, only two groups are allowed to be class-conscious in the United States. One of them is the business community, which is rabidly class-conscious. When you read their literature, it's all full of the danger of the masses and their rising power and how we have to defeat them. It's kind of vulgar, inverted Marxism. The other group is the high planning sectors of the government. They talk the same way — how we have to worry about the rising aspirations of the common man and the impoverished masses who are seeking to improve standards and harming the business climate. So they can be class-conscious. They have a job to do. But it's extremely important to make other people, the rest of the population, believe that there is no such thing as class. We're all just equal, we're all Americans, we live in harmony, we all work together, everything is great.”

Noam Chomsky book The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many

"The Unmentionable Five-Letter Word" in How the World Works, p. 120
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, 1993

People , Way , Communication , Literature

“[The opposition to the Reform Bill of 1866 was directed] against the admission of any portion of the working men to the suffrage. The Tory party, and those from the Liberal ranks who join it, are animated by an unchangeable hostility to any Bill which gives the franchise to the working men. They object to any transfer of power from those who now possess it, and they object to share their power with any increased number of their countrymen who form the working class. They regard the workmen here as the southern planter regards the negroes who were so lately his slaves. They can no longer be bought or sold; so far they are free men. They may work and pay taxes; but they must not vote. They must obey the laws, but must have no share in selecting the men who are to make them. The future position of the millions of working men in the United Kingdom is now determined, if the opposition of the Tory party is to prevail—it is precisely that fixed by the southern planter for the negro. Millions of workmen will bear this in mind; they will now know the point or the gulf which separates one party from the other in the House of Commons.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Public letter (25 March 1866), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 351-352.
1860s

Men , Hostility , Law , Future

“(About the workplace) Tyrants who get into power make life miserable for everyone.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

page 31 of Developing Talents by Temple Grandin and Kate Duffy

Life

“[T]here must be no concessions to the enemy. When a man is allowed to speak because he is rich and powerful, it aggravates the crime of denying the right to the poor and humble.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

“As I looked more carefully at the listening matrix I saw that during the past twenty years we had taken a magnifying glass to the first of these four quadrants, the female experience of powerlessness. I saw I was subconsciously making a false assumption: The more deeply I understood women's experience of powerlessness, the more I assumed men had the power women did not have. In fact, what I was understanding was the female experience of male power.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. xx-xxi.

Women , Men , Understanding , Past

“(Sylvia at typewriter) "Superwoman." The definition is 1. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to fight evil. 2. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to combine a family and a career.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 184

Family , Evil , Fight

“Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Men , Exercises , History , Freedom

Quotes about power page 31

Quotes about power
page 31