Quotes about power
page 45

Augusto Pinochet photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 3.

André Maurois photo
Aron Ra photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Narada Maha Thera photo
John Mearsheimer photo

“In an ideal world, where there are only good states, power would be largely irrelevant.”

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 16

Jonah Goldberg photo

“[S]ocialism’s durability as a concept owes almost nothing to economics and almost everything to the desire for power…”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Terry Eagleton photo

“There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 2010s, Why Marx Was Right (2011), Chapter 4, p. 100

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Fryderyk Skarbek photo
Godfrey Higgins photo
John Tyndall photo
Aneurin Bevan photo
Paul Morphy photo
Ernestine Rose photo

“I suppose you all grant that woman is a human being. If she has a right to life she has a right to earn a support for that life. If a human being, she has a right to have her powers and faculties as a human being developed. If developed, she has a right to exercise them.”

Ernestine Rose (1810–1892) American feminist activist

At a New York State convention, Rochester, N.Y. (1853), quoted in Kolmerten, Carol A., The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999, p. 129-130.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“As long as the church has the power to close the lips of men, so long and no longer will superstition rule this world.”

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

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker photo
Germaine Greer photo
Timothy Dwight IV photo
John Cowper Powys photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Plutarch photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Nycole Turmel photo
Samuel P. Huntington photo

“All civilizations go though similar processes of emergence, rise, and decline. The West differs from other civilizations not in the way it has developed but in the distinctive character of its values and institutions. These include most notably its Christianity, pluralism, individualism, and rule of law, which made it possible for the West to invent modernity, expand throughout the world, and become the envy of other societies. In their ensemble these characteristics are peculiar to the West. Europe, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has said, is “the source — the unique source” of the “ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom. . . . These are European ideas, not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption.” They make Western civilization unique, and Western civilization is valuable not because it is universal but because it is unique. The principal responsibility of Western leaders, consequently, is not to attempt to reshape other civilizations in the image of the West, which is beyond their declining power, but to preserve, protect, and renew the unique qualities of Western civilization. Because it is the most powerful Western country, that responsibility falls overwhelmingly on the United States of America.
To preserve Western civilization in the face of declining Western power, it is in the interest of the United States and European countries … to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 311

Lorin Morgan-Richards photo

“I believe it has come out of the zombie effect of assimilation. Certain young people are fed up with the commercialization of society, of corporations and political parties trying to define us, of stereotypes and racism based [on] greed and power and of the dominant culture building parking lots and malls over our heritage sites.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding a new generational movement in the States to reconnect with and feel empowered by their ancestry.
as quoted in "Wales Arts Review" http://www.walesartsreview.org/the-welsh-in-america/ The Welsh in America” (31 October 2013).

Thomas Hardy photo
Heather Brooke photo
Debbie Reynolds photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Harold Innis photo
Robert Silverberg photo
John Adams photo

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

No. 3
1770s, Novanglus essays (1774–1775)

Thomas Jefferson photo
Catherine the Great photo
James Weldon Johnson photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John C. Wright photo
Yves Klein photo
Robert N. Proctor photo

“Power can be maintained at its maximum only if it is used considerately and sparingly.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: Procedural justice: A psychological analysis. 1975, p. 119

Gloria Estefan photo
James Buchanan photo

“All agree that under the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when the public mind shall be diverted from this question to others of more pressing and practical importance. Throughout the whole progress of this agitation, which has scarcely known any intermission for more than twenty years, whilst it has been productive of no positive good to any human being it has been the prolific source of great evils to the master, to the slave, and to the whole country. It has alienated and estranged the people of the sister States from each other, and has even seriously endangered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance than any mere political question, because should the agitation continue it may eventually endanger the personal safety of a large portion of our countrymen where the institution exists. In that event no form of government, however admirable in itself and however productive of material benefits, can compensate for the loss of peace and domestic security around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man, therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agitation, which since the recent legislation of Congress is without any legitimate object.”

James Buchanan (1791–1868) American politician, 15th President of the United States (in office from 1857 to 1861)

Inaugural address (4 March 1857).

Orson Scott Card photo
Garry Kasparov photo
John Burroughs photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Clement Attlee photo

“When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Labour Party in Perspective (Left Book Club, 1937).
1930s

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.”

Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté.
Maxim 237.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Ayn Rand photo
James Meade photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Tony Benn photo
Roderick Long photo
Qian Xuesen photo
David Brooks photo
William Edward Hartpole Lecky photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“There are just too many Americans grubbing for free stuff and a preponderance of Republicans eager to parcel it out in exchange for power.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Debt-ceiling Denier and Proud" http://www.americandailyherald.com/pundits/ilana-mercer/item/debt-ceiling-hike-denier-and-proud American Daily Herald, October 14, 2013.
2010s, 2013

Giorgio Vasari photo
Vera Farmiga photo

“It's just an incredible gift, giving birth. I never felt so empowered, so powerful, so womanly as I did after I gave birth. I felt more feminine than I ever had in my life.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

As quoted in " Vera Farmiga's New Role: The Gal Who Dumps George Clooney http://parade.com/40183/jeannewolf/1203-vera-farmiga/" by Jeanne Wolf at Parade (December 3, 2009)

Wassily Kandinsky photo
Susan Faludi photo
Philip José Farmer photo

“Now we have lit a candle to the power
Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light
Itself…”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)

Studs Terkel photo
Richard Hovey photo

“Praise be to you, O hills, that you can breathe
Into our souls the secret of your power!”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

"Comrades", p. 49.
Along the Trail (1898)

Marcus Manilius photo

“No barriers, no masses of matter, however enormous, can withstand the powers of the mind. The remotest corners yield to them; all things succumb, the very heaven itself is laid open.”
Rationi nulla resistunt. Claustra nec immensæ moles, ceduntque recessus: Omnia succumbunt, ipsum est penetrabile cœlum.

Book I, line 541.
Astronomica

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet photo
Alex Salmond photo

“It would be much easier if we had the full powers of an independent country. Therefore I was anticipating being in that position by 2017.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Speech (13 November 2007), quoted in The Guardian, ' Scotland in 2017 - independent and flush with oil, says Salmond http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/14/scotland.devolution1' (14 November 2007).

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“One thing has struck me as a bit queer. During my two terms of office the whole Democratic press, and the morbidly honest and 'reformatory' portion of the Republican press, thought it horrible to keep U. S. troops stationed in the Southern States, and when they were called upon to protect the lives of negroes– as much citizens under the Constitution as if their skins were white– the country was scarcely large enough to hold the sound of indignation belched forth by them for some years. Now, however, there is no hesitation about exhausting the whole power of the government to suppress a strike on the slightest intimation that danger threatens. All parties agree that this is right, and so do I. If a negro insurrection should arise in South Carolina, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or if the negroes in either of these states, where they are in a large majority, should intimidate the whites from going to the polls, or from exercising any of the rights of American citizens, there would be no division of sentiment as to the duty of the president. It does seem the rule should work both ways.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Regarding keeping U.S. Army soldiers stationed in southern U.S. states to protect the safety and civil rights of freed slaves (26 August 1877), as quoted in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878, by U.S. Grant, pp. 251-252.
1870s, Letter to Daniel Ammen (1877)

“Communist writers likewise maintain that the Judaic-Christian code of ethics is "class" morality. By this they mean that the Ten Commandments and the ethics of Christianity were created to protect private property and the property class. To show the lengths to which Communist writers have gone to defend this view we will mention several of their favorite interpretations of the Ten Commandments. They believe that "Honor thy Father and thy Mother" was created by the early Hebrews to emphasize to their children the fact that they were the private property of their parents. "Thou shalt not kill" was attributed to the belief of the dominant class that their bodies were private property and therefore they should be protected along with other property rights. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" were said to have been created to implement the idea that a husband was the master of the home and the wife was strictly private property belonging to him. This last line of reasoning led to some catastrophic consequences when the Communists came into power in Russia. In their anxiety to make women "equal with men" and prevent them from becoming private property, they degraded womankind to the lowest and most primitive level. Some Communist leaders advocated complete libertinism and promiscuity to replace marriage and the family.”

The Naked Communist (1958)

John Mearsheimer photo

“States have two kinds of power: latent power and military power.”

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 3, Wealth and Power, p. 55

Albrecht Thaer photo
Thomas Szasz photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Joanna Krupa photo
George W. Bush photo

“The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings.”

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

2000s, 2003, Remarks on U.S.-British relations and foreign policy (November 2003)

Ray Comfort photo

“You may claim that [Paul] merely saw a vision of Jesus. Not so. He met the Lord and came 'to know Him, and the power of His resurrection.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Source: You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Kevin Warwick photo

“I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change.”

Kevin Warwick (1954) British robotics and cybernetics researcher

in Kevin Warwick "Cyborg 1.0", Wired, pp.145-151, February 2000.

Francis Bacon photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 5, "Sea Dreams" (Ged)

Stafford Cripps photo
Friedrich Hayek photo