Quotes about power (10000 quotes, page 63)

“It should be never absent from our recollection that there are now two distinct nations in China--the Chinese and the Tartars--whose characters essentially differ, notwithstanding their external appearance be nearly the same. They are both subject to the most absolute authority that can be vested in a Prince(Qianlong), but with this distinction--that to the Chinese it is a foreign tyranny, to the Tartar a domestic despotism. The latter consider themselves as in some degree partakers of their Sovereign's dominions over the former, and that imagination may, perhaps, somewhat console them under the pressure of his power upon themselves--like the house servants and house negroes belonging to a great landlord in Livonia or planter in Jamaica, who, though serfs themselves, look down upon the peasantry and field negroes as much their inferiors.”

George Macartney (1737–1806) British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat

Our First Ambassador to China (Biography, 1908)

Imagination , Appearance , Housing

“[American] conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 112

Life , Courage , Dependency

“Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

God , Religion , Parting , Perfection

“Adams proclaimed that in the last synthesis, order and anarchy were one, but that the unity was chaos. As anarchist, conservative and Christian, he had no motive or duty but to attain the end; and, to hasten it, he was bound to accelerate progress; to concentrate energy; to accumulate power; to multiply and intensify forces; to reduce friction, increase velocity and magnify momentum, partly because this was the mechanical law of the universe as science explained it; but partly also in order to get done with the present which artists and some others complained of; and finally — and chiefly — because a rigorous philosophy required it, in order to penetrate the beyond, and satisfy man's destiny by reaching the largest synthesis in its ultimate contradiction. Of course the untaught critic instantly objected that this scheme was neither conservative, Christian, nor anarchic, but such objection meant only that the critic should begin his education in any infant school in order to learn that anarchy which should be logical would cease to be anarchic. To the conservative Christian anarchist, the amiable doctrines of Kropotkin were sentimental ideas of Russian mental inertia covered with the name of anarchy merely to disguise their innocence.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , School , Law , Motivation

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish (1977)

“The Society of Friends is not a yearly meeting, not a Five Years Meeting, not an occasional conference, not a central office somewhere, not a series of committee meetings; it is primarily and essentially a widely scattered number of local meetings, little cells, where the actual vitality and power and future potency of Quakerism is being settled and determined. We work in vain unless we keep our minds focused on these local units.”

Rufus M. Jones (1863–1948) American writer

What Will Get Us Ready (1944)

Future

“Pity the Party without enough woman power - there will always be dreamers and leaders, but the dreams won't come true, nor will the leaders reach their goal, without the ready doers.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 3, The truth squad, p. 36

Dreams

“Hypocrisy is a luxury of the powerful.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Debate with Uruguayan presidential candidate Mr. Pedro Bordaberry. Zoom a la noticia, Canal NTN24 (1 July 2014)

“In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.”

Francis Thompson The Hound of Heaven

St. 4.
The Hound of Heaven (1893)

Life , Youth , Sun , Dead

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life , God , War , World

“Good morning everyone. This past week we've seen the best and the worst of humanity. The heinous terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, in Iraq and Nigeria. They showed us once again the depths of the terrorist's depravity. And at the same time we saw the world come together in solidarity. Parisians opening their doors to anyone trapped in the street, taxi drivers turning off their meters to get people home safety, people lining up to donate blood. These simple human acts are a powerful reminder that we cannot be broken and in the face of terror we stand as one. In the wake of these terrible events, I understand the anxiety that many Americans feel. I really do. I don't dismiss the fear of a terrorist bomb going off. There's nothing President Obama and I take more seriously though, than keeping the American people safe. In the past few weeks though, we've heard an awful lot of people suggest that the best way to keep America safe is to prevent any Syrian refugee from gaining asylum in the United States. So let's set the record straight how it works for a refugee to get asylum. Refugees face the most rigorous screening of anyone who comes to the United States. First they are finger printed, then they undergo a thorough background check, then they are interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. And after that the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Defense and the Department of State, they all have to sign off on access. And to address the specific terrorism concerns we are talking about now, we've instituted another layer of checks just for Syrian refugees. There is no possibility of being overwhelmed by a flood of refugees landing on our doorstep tomorrow. Right now, refugees wait 18 to 24 months while the screening process is completed. And unlike in Europe, refugees don't set foot in the United States until they are thoroughly vetted. Let's also remember who the vast majority of these refugees are: women, children, orphans, survivors of torture, people desperately in need medical help. To turn them away and say there is no way you can ever get here would play right into the terrorists' hands. We know what ISIL - we know what they hope to accomplish. They flat-out told us. Earlier this year, the top ISIL leader al-Baghdadi revealed the true goal of their attacks. Here's what he said: "Compel the crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves. Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one and two choices. Either apostatize or emigrate to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution." So it's clear. It's clear what ISIL wants. They want to manufacture a clash between civilizations. They want frightened people to think in terms of "us versus them."They want us to turn our backs on Muslims victimized by terrorism. But this gang of thugs peddling a warped ideology, they will never prevail. The world is united in our resolve to end their evil. And the only thing ISIL can do is spread terror in hopes that we will in turn, turn on ourselves. We will betray our ideals and take actions, actions motivated by fear that will drive more recruits into the arms of ISIL. That's how they win. We win by prioritizing our security as we've been doing. Refusing to compromise our fundamental American values: freedom, openness, tolerance. That's who we are. That's how we win. May God continue to bless the United States of America and God bless our troops.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Weekly presidential address http://www.c-span.org/video/?401096-1/weekly-presidential-address (21 November 2015).
2010s

Women , God , Children , People

“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

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

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Thinking , Freedom

“To give 'the suffrage' to a poor man is to give him as large a part in determining that legislation which is mainly concerned with property as the banker whose name is known on every Exchange in Europe, as the merchant whose ships are in every sea, as the landowner who owns the soil of a whole manufacturing town…two day-labourers shall outvote Baron Rothschild…The bestowal upon any class of a voting power disproportionate to their stake in the country, must infallibly give that class a power pro tanto of using taxation as an instrument of plunder, and expenditure and legislation as a fountain of gain.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 116, 1864, p. 266, pp. 269-270
1860s

Parting , Sea , Country

“The female has learned by long experience to win by losing, to wield power in the passive-aggressive manner of the sadomasochist.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 115

Learning

“Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress? It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do |the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA177 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177
1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

Life , Men , Feeling , Democracy

“Intelligence is loose in the galaxy. Power is in our hands, for better or worse. We can modify Nature’s rules, if we dare, but we cannot ignore her lessons.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 2 (p. 32)
Glory Season (1993)

Intelligence , Nature

“[T]he quest for a social world that can better do justice to a being whose most remarkable quality is precisely the power to overcome and revise, with time, every social or mental structure in which he moves.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: The Critical Legal Studies Movementː Another Time, A Greater Task (2015), p. 105

World , Justice , Time

“Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men , Education , Fear , School

“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

“The trade unions that were swayed by Marxist teaching did not want social peace. They calculated that their chances of acquiring political power would improve with the growing dissatisfaction of the workers. One of the first necessities with which the Hitler Government found itself faced was that of dissolving the organizations that kept alive the antagonism between employers and employees. They were replaced by the Labour Front.”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Quoted in Social Policy in the New Germany by Bruno Rauecker - 1936

Peace , Chance

“If one benighted class of men begins by assuming that whatever is, is right, [contemporary radicals] begin by assuming that whatever is, is wrong. Had we to decide between these two—and I hope I make it clear that I do not think we have to decide thus—the latter would appear more blasphemous than the former because it makes a wholesale condemnation of a creation which is not ours and which exhibits the marks of a creative power that we do not begin to possess. The intent of the radical to defy all substance, or to press it into forms conceived in his mind alone … is an aggression by the self which outrages a deep-laid order of things.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Up From Liberalism,” p. 142.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Men , Hope , Thinking , Appearance

“The growth of entrepreneurial classes throughout the world is an asset in the promotion of human rights and individual liberty, and it should be understood and used as such. Yet peace is the first and most important condition for continued prosperity and freedom. America's military power must be secure because the United States is the only guarantor of global peace and stability. The current neglect of America's armed forces threatens its ability to maintain peace.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Foreign Affairs http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20000101faessay5-p20/condoleezza-rice/campaign-2000-promoting-the-national-interest.html, January/February 2000.

World , Peace , Freedom

“There is a flower, a snow-white flower,
Fragile as if a morning shower
Would end its being, and the earth
Forget to what it gave a birth;
And it looks innocent and pale,
Slight as the least force could avail
To pluck it from its bed, and yet
Its root in depth and strength is set.
The July sun, the autumn rain,
Beat on its slender stalk in vain;—
Around it spreads, despite of care,
Till the whole garden is its share;
And other plants must fade and fall
Beneath its deep and deadly thrall.
This is love's emblem; it is nurst
In all unconciousness at first,
Too slight, too fair, to wake distrust;
No sign how that an after hour
Will rue and weep its fatal power.”

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

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Flowers , Birth , Autumn

“Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing they consider with awe?”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 50

People

“A theory of power has long been the Holy Grail for political science, but the Grail has not been found.”

Mancur Olson (1932–1998) American economist

Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships (2000), Ch. 1 The Logic of Power

Science

“Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to Lord Holland (7 August 1795), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 161-162.
1790s

World , Peace

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger , God , Faith , Food

“I repent and ask for forgiveness for greed. I longed for riches, not thinking that this is to the detriment of others. Covering my sins with the words "historic moment," "brilliant combinations" and "tremendous opportunities," I forgot about my fellow citizens.… I repent and ask forgiveness for trampling free speech. Justifying myself with the desire to save Russia from the red-brown plague, I defined the policy of the country's chief information mouthpiece, neglecting democratic values.… I repent and ask for forgiveness for bringing Vladimir Putin to power. I should have seen, but could not see in him the future of a greedy tyrant and usurper, a man who trampled freedom and stopped the development of Russia. Many of us did not recognize it then, but that does not excuse me. I'm sorry.”

Boris Berezovsky (1946–2013) Russian mathematician

Facebook posting (26 February 2012)

Forgiveness , Thinking , Freedom , Future

“I do have the toughest, most comprehensive plan to go after Wall Street. And not just the big banks, all the other financial interests that pose a threat to our economy. And I have said no bank is too big to fail and no executive is too powerful to jail, and I will use the powers that have now been passed by the Congress, by President Obama, who, incidentally, took a lot of money from Wall Street, which didn’t stop him from signing into law the toughest regulations on the financial industry since the Great Depression. There are a lot of different powerful interests in Washington. I’ve taken them on. I took on the drug companies. I took on the insurance companies. Before there was something called Obamacare, there was something called Hillarycare, and I worked really hard to get comprehensive health care reform.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money , Law

“"Pull yourself together," said the Voice, "for you have to do the job I've chosen for you."Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round."I've chosen you," said the Voice. "You are the only man except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power."”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 9: Mr. Thomas Marvel

Fools , Help

“The preposterous distinction of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties are not fulfilled, the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. Still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost super-human powers.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 9

Life , People , World , Sex

“If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Julian Delphiki, aka Bean.
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

God , World , Time

“He stood with his back angled to the wall. To an indifferent observer he was simply in idle conversation, but it wasn't like that at all. This was an instinctive gesture of survival, being in constant readiness for an attack. His head didn't turn and his eyes didn't seem to move, but I knew he saw us. I could feel the hackles on the back of my neck stiffening and I knew he felt the same way.
Dog was meeting dog. Nobody knew it but the dogs and they weren't telling.
He was bigger than I thought. The suggestion of power I had seen in his photographs was for real. When he moved it was with the ponderous grace of some jungle animal, dangerously deceptive, because he could move a lot faster if he had to.
When we were ten feet away he pretended to see us for the first time and a wave of charm washed the cautious expression from his face and he stepped out to greet Dulcie with outstretched hand.
But it wasn't her he was seeing. It was me he was watching. I was one of his own kind. I couldn't be faked out and wasn't leashed by the proprieties of society. I could lash out and kill as fast as he could and of all the people in the room, I was the potential threat. I knew what he felt because I felt the same way myself.”

Mickey Spillane book The Body Lovers

The Body Lovers (1967)

People , Dogs , Way , Feeling

“What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 208

“I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 6
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

Love , World , Hope , Heart

“Without the music to shout over, few people bothered saying anything." (Remarking on a power cut while in a bar in the Dominican Republic)”

Mark Kurlansky (1948) American journalist

A Continent of Islands" (1992).

People , Music

“The tape is astonishing. And here's what's frustrating to me. And you asked specific questions, for example, about what people knew about Bill Ayers, you know, and who they voted for, the coal power plant comments. And these were really significant issues. And it seems that Obama voters, if you don't listen to talk radio, if you don't watch the FOX News Channel, you are not anywhere nearly as informed as people that are just hearing the bumper stickers, the slogans, the snippets of the commercials of the media so, journalism died in 2008, and it influenced a lot of people on the way out.”

Sean Hannity (1961) American television host, conservative political commentator

Hannity and Colmes (2 December 2008) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460964,00.html

People , Way , Question

“There is a Power, a Power that controls the moon, the stars and the sun. It is a Power that can burn all other powers. It is the Power that pervades each atom, all that is finite, all that is infinite, a Power that no one can see…It has no assistance. It is completely alone. Original.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

The Point Where God and Man Meet (2006)

Star , Sun

“In the last few years, we have seen the executive branch declare itself outside the law — in prosecuting a war on terror. The law against torture has been suspended. The balance between the executive and legislative branch has been dismissed by signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive. The executive has declared its right to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely, to tap anyone's phones without court warrants and to detain and torture anyone it decides is an "enemy combatant." In that sense, we have already left the realm of constitutional government in favor of a protectorate outside the law promising to keep us safe (but never from itself).
But this new move to create a de facto dictator for the financial markets, to invest a Treasury secretary with unprecedented powers to buy and sell at close to a trillion dollar level — with no oversight or accountability: this is a new collapse in democratic life and constitutional norms.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"How Democracies Become Dictatorships," http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/how-democracies.html The Daily Dish (29 September 2008)

Life , War , Law , Sense

“Ropate Sivo, General Secretary of the Conservative Alliance: "I ask Frank to remain where he is and not to interfere in politics. He should not think that he will always be commander because there are other capable people that can do the job. He is only hungry for power and just because he helped bring the present people into power as an interim government, that does not give him the right to threaten the present government.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(Quoted in the Fiji Sun http://www.sun.com.fj, 9 March 2006.).

People , Thinking , Help

“We believe that to Christ belongs creative power — that "without Him was not any thing made which was made." We believe that from Him came all life at first. In Him life was as in its deep source. He is the fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into existence without His creative power, so none continues to exist without His sustaining energy. We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence, and that the centre of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 56.

Life , World , History , Universe

“The market remained the generator of demand for goods and services, but modern business enterprise took over the functions of coordinating flows of goods and services through existing processes of production and distribution, and of allocating funds and personnel for future production and distribution. As modern business enterprise acquired functions hitherto carried out by the market, it became the most powerful institution in the American economy and its managers the most influential group of economic decision makers. The rise of modern business enterprise in the United States, therefore, brought with it managerial capitalism.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 1.

Business , Decision , Future

“I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Neal Stephenson coins the term "text literacy" during interview for the article "Pushing the Edge With 'Diamond Age' Nano-Machines," Associated Press, May 10, 1995

Way , Mathematics , Fashion , Thinking

“In spite of the pangs of travail, the longing for motherhood remains the most powerful instinct in woman.”

Joseph H. Hertz (1872–1946) British rabbi

Genesis III, 16 (p. 12)
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (one-volume edition, 1937, ISBN 0-900689-21-8

“Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union–based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "Configurations of marketing and sales: a taxonomy", 2008, p. 133; Abstract

Knowledge , Study , Strong , Success

“It was recognized, and recognized fairly, that when you get large bodies of workmen together they cannot, nor is it fair to expect them to, negotiate individually against the more powerful management that controls large bodies of men; and so it was that, to secure effective freedom of contract, power was given for man to join himself to man for that very purpose of bettering his position. The trade union as we know it came into being to meet the new conditions of industry. It was essential then, and for that purpose it will continue to be essential. This country is the birthplace of that kind of combination—this country, which has been the birthplace of every effort to free mankind by legitimate and evolutionary means, and will continue to be so, long after the efforts of other and less happy countries have gone down in failure and disaster.”

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

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 161.
1926

Men , Failure , Effort , Freedom

“Wisdom, Power and Goodness meet
In the bounteous field of wheat.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"The Wheatfield"

Wisdom

“In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.
The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood — these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society — the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Love , Life , Fear , Justice

“Intersectionality is a concept for understanding oppression, not exploitation. Many Black feminists acknowledge the systemic roots of racism and sexism, but place far less emphasis than Marxists on the connection between the system of exploitation and oppression. Marxism is necessary because it provides a framework for understanding the relationship between oppression and exploitation and also identifies the agency for creating the material and social conditions that will make it possible to end both oppression and exploitation: the working class. Workers not only have the power to shut down the system, but also to replace it with a socialist society, based on collective ownership of the means of production. Although other groups in society suffer oppression, only the working class possesses this collective power. So the concept of intersectionality needs Marxist theory to realize the kind of unified movement that is capable of ending all forms of oppression. At the same time, Marxism can only benefit from integrating left-wing Black feminism into our own politics and practice.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Understanding , Suffering , Time

“Talk to me of treaties! Talk to me of the League of Nations! Every Great Power in Europe was pledged by treaty to preserve Belgium. That was a League of Nations, but it failed.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech (7 December 1917), Liberal Magazine, XXV (1917), p. 604, quoted in Henry R. Winkler, ‘The Development of the League of Nations Idea in Great Britain, 1914-1919’, The Journal of Modern History Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1948), p. 105

“We have never yet had a Labour Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

As quoted in The Observer (30 January 1983)

“Pride is a powerful force. The pride that kept so many men in California. They want to go home. But I can't go until I've got something to prove my success. They've been reading about success back home. I know, says the miner, how many people are failing. Failure is the most common fact of life in California. They don't know that. How can I go home a failure, when they expect me to come home a success? So they stay.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

On the Predicament of the Miners
The West (1996)

Life , Men , People , Home

“When [Nazi] power had been attained there was not only no unity in regard to future policy but no united group of leaders. The party included a sort of sample collection of all political outlooks in Germany, from crass reactionaries to doctrinaire pacifists and the extremist Left-wing Socialists.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 26

Future

“The story of the brain's separation from the body begin with Rene Descartes. The most influential philosopher of the seventeenth century, Descartes divided being into two distinct substances: a holy soul and a mortal carcass. The soul was the source of reason, science, and everything nice. Our flesh, on the other hand, was "clock-like," just a machine that bleeds. With this schism, Descartes condemned the body to a life of subservience, a power plant for the brain's light bulbs.”

Jonah Lehrer book Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Source: Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007), Chapter 1, page 3.

Life , Soul , Light , Science

“The habit which many have got into must be as far as possible corrected; those, I mean, who while they fight strenuously against the baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for pleasure in the shape of worldly honour and positions which will gratify their love of power. They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his masters, and thought liberty consisted in that change. But all alike are slaves, even though they should not all go on being ruled by the same masters, as long as a dominion of any sort, with power to enforce it, is set over them.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 16

Love , Pleasure , Change , Fight

“Amongst the great and numerous dangers to which this country, and particularly the monarchy, is exposed in consequence of the enormous public debt, the influence, the powerful and widely-extended influence, of the monied interest is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it necessarily aims at measures which directly tend to the subversion of the present order of things…I mean an interest hostile alike to the land-holder and to the stockholder, to the colonies, to the real merchant, and to the manufacturer, to the clergy, to the nobility and to the throne; I mean the numerous and powerful body of loan-jobbers, directors, brokers, contractors and farmers-general, which has been engendered by the excessive amount of the public debt, and the almost boundless extension of the issues of paper-money.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (8 September 1804), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), p. 29.

Money , Hostility , Country

“We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country… That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

The War You Don't See, ITV1 (UK), Tuesday 14 December 2010

Women , Men , War , Children

“Give me a baptism of glowing love,
Thy power and presence wheresoe'er I rove;
And my last prayer, all other prayers above —
Oh, give to me
More of Thyself, Lord Jesus: more of Thee!”

Anna Shipton (1815–1901) British religious writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 397.

Love

“… between Lon Nol's corrupt regime and the Khmers Rouges' serious one, the choice is obvious. If you were in my place, if you were a Cambodian patriot, if you were a Sihanouk who loves his own country more than anything else in the world, you'd say the same… It's only proper to congratulate the Cambodian communists and tell them: "Well done. You deserve power for ever, and no one must ever replace you. Not even Sihanouk. Sihanouk must not govern in your stead anymore, as he's been unable to do what you've achieved. He wanted to, and dreamed about it, but he couldn't do it. After all, Sihanouk counts for nothing. It's Cambodia that counts."”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 126.
Interviews

Love , World , Dreams , Country

“Again, science has the power to silence heretics. Today it is the only institution that can claim authority. Like the Church in the past, it has the power to destroy, or marginalise, independent thinkers. (Think how orthodox medicine reacted to Freud, and orthodox Darwinians to Lovelock.) In fact, science does not yield any fixed picture of things, but by censoring thinkers who stray too far from current orthodoxies it preserves the comforting illusion of a single established worldview.”

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

The Human: Against Fundamentalism - Religious and Scientific (p. 19)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Thinking , Silence , Science , Past

“Triumphant capitalism has unleashed a powerful drive toward inequality, not improvement, in the social sphere.”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter One, Number One And the Political Economy Of Communication, p. 56

“They say that [martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 182
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On himself

People , Law , Country

“Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

God , Sleep , Waiting

“Reason is a free gift from God and politeness is acquisition. He who undertakes politeness has power over it. He who undertakes reason increases (himself) through that nothing but ignorance.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 23.
Religious Wisdom

God

“As long as we dwell in the shadow, we cannot see the sun itself; but Now we see through a glass darkly, says St. Paul. Yet the shadow is so enlightened by the sunshine that we can perceive the distinctions between all the virtues and all the truth which is profitable to our mortal state. But if we would become one with the brightness of the Sun, we must follow love, and go out of ourselves into the Wayless, and then the Sun will draw us with our blinded eyes into Its own brightness, in which we shall possess unity with God.... In his outpouring, He wills to he wholly ours: and then He teaches us to live in the riches of the virtues. In His indrawing touch all our powers forsake us, and then we sit under His shadow, and His fruit is sweet to our taste, for the Fruit of God is the Son of God, Whom the Father brings forth in our spirit. This Fruit is so infinitely sweet to our taste that we can neither swallow It nor assimilate It, but It rather absorbs us into Itself and assimilates us with Itself.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love , God , Truth , Sun

“The term "cult" is always one of individual judgment. It has been variously applied to groups involved in beliefs and practices just off the beat of traditional religions; to groups making exploratory excursions into non-Western philosophical practices; and to groups involving intense relationships between followers and a powerful idea or leader. The people I have studied, however, come from groups in the last, narrow band of the spectrum: groups such as the Children of God, the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Krishna Consciousness movement, the Divine Light Mission, and the Church of Scientology. I have not had occasion to meet with members of the People's Temple founded by the late Reverend Jim Jones, who practiced what he preached about being prepared to commit murder and suicide, if necessary, in defense of the faith.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Coming Out of the Cults http://www.cultfaq.org/coming-out-of-the-cults.html, Dr. Margaret Singer, Psychology Today, January, 1979
1970s

God , Children , People , Faith

“We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, Suicide of a Superpower (2011)

Men , Religion , Heart

“The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let em sing of names rememberèd,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology

Memory , Singing , Time , Dead

“Political power automatically gravitates toward the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening. The centralization of political power always destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level and transferring it to the officers of the central government. This process gradually benumbs the spirit of "voluntarism" among the people, and they lose the will to solve their own problems. They also cease to be involved in community affairs. They seek the anonymity of oblivion in the seething crowds of the city and often degenerate into faceless automatons who have neither a voice nor a vote.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

People , Communication , Problem , Decision

“Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Nature , Passion , Waiting

“But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Answer to question seeking his views on limiting U.S. presidents to two terms, news conference, Washington, D.C. (October 5, 1956), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956, p. 862.
1950s

People , Age , Faith , Thinking

“To-day the United States stands out as the mightiest Power on earth, and yet America is a threat to no one. All know that she will never use her power for selfish aims or territorial aggrandisement in the future any more than she has done in the past. We look upon her forces and our own forces and those of other nations as instruments that must never be employed save in the interests of world security and for the repression of the aggressor.”

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

Address to the United States Congress (13 November 1945), quoted in The Times (14 November 1945), p. 4
1940s

World , Past , Future , Selfishness

“How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change, a union more compatible than a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured and raised above its own powers, its human operations, its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God, formed and transformed in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

God , Truth , Food , Way

“Even though you may have started out saying you wanted imaginative, novel ideas, the tendency to drift back into the conventional is powerful.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Imagination , Idea

“There is … a clever maxim which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right] and wholesome state, revolts at [[crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness…”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 17 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_17
The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

Feeling , Idea , Nature , Falseness

“The emergent humans were still animals, still bound by natural law. No innovation in the way they lived would have taken root if it had not given them an adaptive advantage in the endless struggle to survive. An ability to believe in things that weren’t true was a powerful tool.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (p. 367)

Law , Way , Nature , Animals

“In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Remark during testimony of Floyd McKissick before a Senate subcommittee of which Kennedy was a member (December 8, 1966); reported in Federal Role in Urban Affairs, hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 89th Congress, 2d session, part 11, p. 2312 (1967)

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 96

Inspirational , Powerful

“Voluptuous habits speedily bind all the powers of the soul in loathsome vassalage, and exclude every thought except such as relate to the beastly pleasures of which it is the slave. Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced, — tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy, — the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays; memory becomes extinguished, inanity destroys resolution, and the heart is as cold and callous as a cinder extinct. It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim, and overwhelm him in awful retribution.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 354.

Love , Life , Friendship , Pleasure

“When we are struggling against overwhelming odds, when we are pitting ourselves against the combined might of state apparatus and military power, we are sometimes subject to doubts — usually the doubts of those whose belief in the permanence of an existing order is absolute. It is amazing how many people still remain convinced that it is wise to accept the status quo.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours (1997)

People

“From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms dictatorship and democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing to understand the theory of class struggle, and accustomed to seeing in the political arena the petty squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois conceives dictatorship to mean the annulment of all the liberties and guarantees of democracy, tyranny of every kind, and every sort of abuse of power in the personal interests of a dictator.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 31.
Collected Works

Democracy , Understanding , Personality

“Notwithstanding the hope that my friend [Cobden], who has just addressed you, has expressed, that it may not become a war of classes, I am not sure that it has not already become such, and I doubt whether it can have any other character. I believe this to be a movement of the commercial and industrial classes against the Lords and great proprietors of the soil…Since the time when we first came to London to ask the attention of Parliament to the question of the Corn Law, two millions of human beings have been added to the population of the United Kingdom…I see them now in my mind's eye ranged before me, old men and young children, all looking to the Government for bread; some endeavouring to resist the stroke of famine, clamorous and turbulent, but still arguing with us; some dying mute and uncomplaining. Multitudes have died of hunger in the United Kingdom since we first asked the Government to repeal the Corn Law, and although the great and powerful may not regard those who suffer mutely and die in silence, yet the recording angel will note down their patient endurance and the heavy guilt of those by whom they have been sacrificed…”

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

Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 141-142.
1840s

Men , Hunger , War , Children

“In the United States… a handful of corporations centralize decisions and responsibilities that are relevant for military and political as well as economic developments of global significance. For nowadays the military and the political cannot be separated from economic considerations of power. We now live not in an economic order or a political order, but in a political economy that is closely linked with military institutions and decisions. This is obvious in the repeated "oil crisis" in the Middle East, or in the relevance of Southeast Asia and African resources for the Western powers…”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Character & Social Structure (1954).
1950s

Decision

“[C]ontent [is] an obstacle to the exercise of power.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Triumph of the Will"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Exercises

“America is more than just a land mass between two oceans, America is an ideal. A simple, yet powerful ideal. Freedom matters.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)

Freedom

“"We support the election process. We support democracy, but that doesn't mean that we have to support governments that get elected as a result of democracy." Bush commenting about the Palestinian elections that resulted in Hamas coming to power in the Gaza Strip. March 29, 2006”

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

"Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush" http://books.google.co.kr/books?id=1mEa-o1LGa8C, p.617
2000s, 2006

Democracy , Support

“Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything.
It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall.
So love is always growth.
I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding.
Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas". Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho28chic#page/n163/mode/2up

Love , People , World , Beauty

“The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of remarkable Christian forbearance among men--were it not for a mawkish humanitarianism, coupled with imperfect digestive powers, we should devour our young, as Nature intended.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Town Crier http://books.google.com/books?ei=65MyT4yGB6bJ0QGg9p3mBw&id=GqUOAQAAMAAJ&q="The+fact+that+boys+are+allowed+to+exist+at+all+is+evidence+of+a+remarkable+Christian+forbearance+among+men+were+it+not+for+a+mawkish+humani-tarianism+coupled+with+imperfect+digestive+powers+we+should+devour+our+young+as+Nature+intended"&pg=PA74#v=onepage column in the San Francisco News-Letter (c. 1870)

Men , Boy , Nature

“I’ve never thought much of Joe Nye’s writings on soft power.”

Richard Perle (1941) American government official

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there…. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space….. A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria…. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature…Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Wole Soyinka: Duncan Gardham - Mutallab: Again Soyinka Blames UK For Breeding Terrorists http://thewillnigeria.com/world/3592-Mutallab-Again-Soyinka-Blames-For-Breeding-Terrorists.html - TheWill, February 2, 2010</ref><ref>James Meikle - England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/02/soyinka-england-cesspit-islamists - The Guardian, February 2, 2010

Life , Death , People , World

“The power of the sword, say the minority…, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans.”

Tench Coxe (1755–1824) American economist

Source: http://www.friesian.com/quotes.htm Pennsylvania Gazette], Feb. 20, 1788

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/41022229/, archived image from newspapers.com, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788 page 2 column 2

Fear

“Both the control of territory and the political domination of one state over another have profound consequences for international economic relations. However… market power or economic power has itself become a principal means by which states seek to organize and manipulate the international division of labor to their own advantage.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

p, 125
War and Change in World Politics (1981)

“He knew that once you bested anybody like Mr. Scratch in fair fight, his power on you was gone. And he could see that Mr. Scratch knew it too.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

Fight

“All parties without exception recognize us as a political power, and exactly in proportion to our power. Even the craziest reactionary that denies us the right of existence courts our favor and by his acts gives the lie to his words. From the fact that our assistance is sought by other parties, some of our comrades draw the strange conclusion that we should reverse the party tactics, and in place of the old policy of the class struggle against all other parties, substitute the commercial polities of log rolling, wire pulling and compromise. Such persons forget the power which makes our alliance sought for, even by our bitterest enemies, would have had absolutely no existence were it not for the old class struggle tactics. If Marx, Engels and Lassalle had accepted from Bernstein and his modest or not modest fellow thinkers the tactics of compromise and dependence upon bourgeois parties, then there never would have been any Social Democracy; we would have been simply the tail of the Progressive party.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Lie , Democracy , Drawing , Dependency

“I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own heart, what kind of a being God is?... Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him, heard him, or communed with him?... God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:303-04 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

God , Secret , World , Communication

“You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power—something that in fact brings both in its train.”
“And what is that?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

The count leaned forward. “Knowledge.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 21, “The Frightened Ones” (p. 491).

Knowledge , Training

“The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don’t begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives — and millions may die there.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

And the solution to the Iran crisis is..., JohannHari.com, January 22, 2006, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=783,

Time

“…neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power.”

John Money (1921–2006) psychologist, sexologist and author

Homosexuality: Bipotenitality, Terminology, and History

Faith , Science

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

God

“I've chosen not to challenge the rule of law, because in our system there really is no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution. When the Supreme Court makes a decision, no matter how strongly one disagrees with it, one faces a choice — are we, in John Adams' phrase, a nation of laws, or is it a contest made on raw power?”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

As quoted in "Gore Sees No Reason to Run" by Patrick Healy in The New York Times (25 May 2007) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/gore-sees-no-reason-to-run/.

Law , Decision

Quotes about power page 63

Quotes about power
page 63