Quotes about power
page 76

“Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave's own power.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 9 : Empowering the Self, p. 117

Perfection

“I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What, but Thy grace, can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me!”

Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847) Anglican priest, hymn-writer and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 276.

“Love, money, sex or power:”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Love is most important. Least important would be power because if you have money, you automatically have power. Sex is also important because I'm a normal person.
Personal Quotes

Love, Money, Sex

“The social action approach, assumes there is a disadvantaged (often oppressed) segment of the population that needs to be organized, perhaps in alliance with others, in order to pressure the power structure for increased resources or for treatment more in accordance with democracy or social justice.”

Charles Zastrow (1942) American sociologist

Source: The practice of social work. (1995), p. 315; partly cited in: Lupe Alle-Corliss, ‎Randy Alle-Corliss (1999) Advanced practice in human service agencies. p. 233

Justice, Democracy

“The power he commanded insisted upon subjects. Strength was ever relative, and he could not dominate without the company of the dominated.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 20 (p. 555)

“In time one came to recognize the type in other men, with differences and variations, as normal; men whose energies were the greater, the less they wasted on thought; men who sprang from the soil to power; apt to be distrustful of themselves and of others; shy; jealous; sometimes vindictive; more or less dull in outward appearance; always needing stimulants, but for whom action was the highest stimulant — the instinct of fight.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, Appearance, Time, Fight

“Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used in drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which form in the human body.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter III, Sec. 17

Spring, Drink, Country

“Sheer power of a great poem is enough to guarantee that it will ultimately make itself felt, if the reader is in a receptive mood.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Interview Michael Garvey @Irish Literary Supplement' Fall 1998
Poetry Quotes

Mood

“The apostles were scattered, and even the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem had neither the power nor the means to impose uniformity.
In these circumstances, we must imagine the literature of Christianity as spreading gradually, irregularly, and in a manner which variations inevitable.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 134

Imagination, Literature

“I think it will be felt by the community as a whole as if they had lost a relative. Certainly those who have been associated with him closely for years will feel a deep sense of personal bereavement. I have never met a great public figure since I have been in politics who so completely won the attachment and affection of the men who came into contact with him. He was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all. I really cannot trust myself to say more. The masses of the people of this country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they ever had in the high places of the land. His sympathy in all suffering was real, deep, and unaffected. He was truly a great man—a great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics. He was entirely free from fear. He was a man of supreme courage. Ireland has certainly lost one of her truest friends, and what is true of Ireland is true of every section of the community of this Empire which has a fight to maintain against powerful foes.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Lloyd George upon Campbell-Bannerman's death, quoted in The Times (23 April 1908), p. 5.
About

Love, Men, People, Fear

“Might does not equal right…fortunately, the majority holds power by a very small margin. There are certain things the majority has no right to mess with, certain things that are definitely worth fighting for--worth defending and worth offending.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Fight

“A thousand newspapers vulgarise knowledge, debase aesthetical appreciation, democratise success and make impossible all that was once unusual and noble. The man of letters has become a panderer to the intellectual appetites of a mob or stands aloof in the narrowness of a coterie. There is plenty of brilliance everywhere, but one searches in vain for a firm foundation, the power or the solidity of knowledge. The select seek paradox in order to distinguish themselves from the herd; a perpetual reiteration of some startling novelty can alone please the crowd…. Of all literary forms the novel only has still some genius and even that is perishing of the modern curse of overproduction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

March 26, 1910
India's Rebirth

Search, Knowledge, Success

“Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense!' was the reply, 'that's all very well in theory, but it doesn't work so. The returning of slaves amounts to nothing in fact. All that is obsolete. And why make all this row? Can't you hush? We've nothing to do with slavery, we tell you. We can't touch it; and if you persist in this agitation about a mere form and theory, why, you're a set of pestilent fanatics and traitors; and if you get your noisy heads broken, you get just what you deserve'. And they quoted in the faces of the abolitionists the words of Governor Edward Everett, who was not an authority with them, in that fatal inaugural address, 'The patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invited to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave'. It was as if some kindly Pharisee had said to Christ, 'Don't try to cast out that evil spirit; it may rend the body on departing'. Was it not as if some timid citizen had said, 'Don't say hard things of intemperance lest the dram-shops, to spite us, should give away the rum'? And so the battle raged. The abolitionists dashed against slavery with passionate eloquence like a hail of hissing fire. They lashed its supporters with the scorpion whip of their invective. Ambition, reputation, ortune, ease, life itself they threw upon the consuming altar of their cause. Not since those earlier fanatics of freedom, Patrick Henry and James Otis, has the master chord of human nature, the love of liberty, been struck with such resounding power. It seemed in vain, so slowly their numbers increased, so totally were they outlawed from social and political and ecclesiastical recognition. The merchants of Boston mobbed an editor for virtually repeating the Declaration of Independence. The city of New York looked on and smiled while the present United States marshal insulted a woman as noble and womanly and humane as Florence Nightingale. In other free States men were flying for their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, murdered; but still as, in the bitter days of Puritan persecution in Scotland, the undaunted voices of the Covenanters were heard singing the solemn songs of God that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak of the barren mountains, until the great dumb wilderness was vocal with praise — so in little towns and great cities were heard the uncompromising voices of these men sternly intoning the majestic words of the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, which echoed from solitary heart to heart until the whole land rang with the litany of liberty.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Life, Men, God

“The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Rev. Frederick Beasley (20 November 1825)
1820s

God, Happiness, World

“Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis, last year's devilish, dark-toned Don Giovanni, Teatro Lirico has a powerful singer with an impressive stage presence. Sparks flew because Vasileva and Juozapaitis created such emotional tension: she more nuanced than the usual submissive heroine, he more sympathetic than the stock villain.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Lloyd Schwartz, "Agonies and Ecstasies". The Boston Phoenix (April 9, 2004) http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/other_stories/multi_1/documents/03734446.asp

“And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless things.”

H. G. Wells book Anticipations

Anticipations (1902)

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every bulwark of defence—first the timely creation of an Air Force superior to anything within striking distance of our shores; secondly, the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations; and thirdly, the making of alliances and military conventions, all within the Covenant, in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this Power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses.”

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_370 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement The 1930s

Pleasure, Sense, Time, Success

“Consumer Christianity seeks to construct programs to capture God's power and produce predetermined outcomes, rather than surrender to the mysterious movement of God's grace which, like the wind or fire, is beyond our control.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

God

“We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society…We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in Brighton (6 October 1971)
1970s

Decision, Change

“Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section IV, p 155 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, with no legal rights of existence on the soil to the vast majority who do not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or a hunting-ground, and expel every human being who has hitherto lived upon it. In a thickly-populated country like England, where every acre has its owner and its occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that, as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.”

Alfred Russel Wallace book The Malay Archipelago

Last Words, addendum to later editions.
The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Exercises, Science, Country

“But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read.”

Utah Phillips (1935–2008) American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet

Track 13: "The Long Memory." Fellow Workers, Righteous Babe Records (1999)

Books, Beauty, History, Passion

“Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.”

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

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Apology

Death, Pleasure, Fear, Hope

“The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe — responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

This is a reference to a quote of Rudyard Kipling, "Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages," which became widely known after being quoted by prime minister Stanley Baldwin in a speech of 1931-03-17.
Source: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), Ch. 6: An Honourable Death

Age, Housing

“While those who lusted for undeserved power, and their many misguided followers, were embarked upon a malignant enterprise against their homeland and its leaders, most successors to ancient warriors and the ethically naked but finely attired retailers of divine wisdom sank deeper into the ashes of their own vice.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Wisdom

“He had never been sure but that there might be something to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a hell of burning sulphur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his New Thoughts, his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything. It did not matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

God, Hell

“We can establish universally an education that recognizes in every child a tongue-tied prophet, and in the school the voice of the future, and that equips the mind to think beyond and against the established context of thought and of life as well as to move within it. We can develop a democratic politics that renders the structure of society open in fact to challenge and reconstruction, weakening the dependence of change on crisis and the power of the dead over the living. We can make the radical democratization of access to the resources and opportunities of production the touchstone of the institutional reorganization of the market economy, and prevent the market from remaining fastened to a single version of itself. We can create policies and arrangements favorable to the gradual supersession of economically dependent wage work as the predominant form of free labor, in favor of the combination of cooperation and self-employment. We can so arrange the relation between workers and machines that machines are used to save our time for the activities that we have not yet learned how to repeat and consequently to express in formulas. We can reshape the world political and economic order so that it ceases to make the global public goods of political security and economic openness depend upon submission to an enforced convergence to institutions and practices hostile to the experiments required to move, by many different paths, in such a direction.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 29

Life, Hostility, World, Education

“The money received for sales has no other significance or value than its power to buy, and trade can only be imaged truly as an exchange of goods for goods in which the processes of selling and of buying are complementary.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

p, 125
The Morals of Economic Irrationalism (1920)

Money

“If you should have visits here from those professing to be Christians, and they intimate a desire to preach to you, by all means invite them to do so. Accord to every reputable person who may visit you, and who may wish to occupy the stands of your meeting houses to preach to you, the privilege of doing so, no matter whether he be a Catholic, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Free-will Baptist, Methodist, or whatever he may be; and if he wishes to speak to your children let him do so. Of course you have the power to correct whatever false teachings or impressions, if any, your children may hear or receive.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 14:195 (June 3, 1871)
1870s

Children, Housing, Personality, Falseness

“Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

As quoted in A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought (2004) by Lloyd Albert Johnson

War

“When thus the heart is in a vein
Of tender thought, the simplest strain
Can touch it with peculiar power.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Evenings in Greece, First Evening.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“You may have the best machinery in the world, you may have adequate supplies of munitions, you may have the men, you may have the generals; but wars are fought out eventually always as contests of will, and there are needed in the responsible positions men who are prepared to give decisions, who are not afraid to take risks, men of inflexible will-power. In all these respects, I say, from very close working with him for the last two years, that we have in the Prime Minister a leader in war such as this country has rarely had in its long history.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1942/may/19/war-situation#column_67 in the House of Commons (19 May 1942). 1940s

Men, War, World, History

“It is to the influence of the opinion of those whom the multitude [the populous] judges best informed, and to whom it has been accustomed to give its confidence in regard to the most important matters of life, that the propagation of those errors is due, which in times of ignorance, have covered the face of the earth. Magic and astrology offer us two great examples. These errors… having for a basis only universal credence, have maintained themselves during a very long time; but at last the progress of science has destroyed them in the minds of enlightened men, whose opinion consequently has caused them to disappear… through the power of imitation and habit which had so generally spread them… This power, the richest resource of the moral world, establishes and conserves in a whole nation ideas entirely contrary to those… elsewhere… What indulgence ought we not then to have for opinions different from ours, when this difference often depends only upon the various points of view where circumstances have placed us! Let us enlighten those whom we judge insufficiently instructed; but first let us examine critically our own opinions, and weigh with impartiality, their respective probabilities.”

Pierre-Simon Laplace book Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

p, 125
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)

Life, Men, World, Error

“Far from securing order, terror intensifies disorder and social disintegration. Terror, the most extreme form of power, is the least effective, and rulers employ it to the detriment of their own authority. **The Rules of Chaos (1969), p 48”

Stephen Vizinczey (1933) Hungarian-Canadian writer

“It is not to the force or validity of the argument that I object, but to the misinterpretation of its scope. It is a clinching dialectical thumbscrew for the torture of agnostics; yes, with reference to them and their very lawful stadium of thinking, it is even a step of value in the struggle of the soul toward a conviction of its really infinite powers and prospects; but I cannot see in it any full proof of the real being of God. Strictly construed, it is, as I have just endeavoured to show, simply the vindication of that active sovereign judgment which is the light of every mind, which organises even the most elementary perceptions, and which goes on in its ceaseless critical work of reorganisation after reorganisation, building all the successive stages of science, and finally mastering those ultimate implications of science that constitute the insights of philosophy.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.111

God, Law, Soul, Thinking

“In the religious traditions of humankind there are at least four ways in which people have encountered the divine. First of all, there is the experience of God in nature, as the power behind natural phenomena. Such an experience usually leads to belief in nature gods. This is clearly seen in Hinduism. Secondly, there is the experience of God in the depths of one’s being. God-ward movement often takes an inward direction. This leads to the cultivation of interiority. The Upanishads bear witness to this kind of an experience of God. It is also found among the Christian mystics. Thirdly, there is the experience of God mediated through the rites and doctrines of religions. This is probably the most valued form of God-experience in popular Catholicism, in which the frequent reception of the sacraments is highly esteemed. Such an approach to the experience of God is found also among the followers of other religions. Finally, there is the experience of God in inter-human relationships and socio-political involvements. This form of God-experience is, I believe, typical of the biblical tradition.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

God, People, Religion, Way

“And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power. Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share — That we lost.”

Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) German aviator

As quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner in The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kz8jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TYMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5612,5305691&dq=i-still-wear-the-iron-cross-with-diamonds-hitler-gave-me-but-today-in-all-germany-you-can-t-find-a-single-person-who-voted-adolf-hitler-into-power&hl=en

War, Cars, Feeling, Question

“The top of modern American society is increasingly unified and often seems wilfully co-ordinated: at the top there has emerged an elite of power. The middle levels are a drifting set of stalemated balancing forces: the middle does not link the bottom with the top. The bottom of this society is fragmented, and even as a passive fact, increasingly powerless:at the bottom there is emerging a mass society.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

“Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

Lying

“Consider Every Battle a Life and Death Struggle. This principle focuses on commitment and determination. When your life is at stake, you make an absolute commitment of all your power to your survival. For a shaman, the proper way to approach every task it with absolute commitment. The shaman realizes that a predator is not automatically successful because it is equipped with sharper teeth or stronger muscles. A predator can be seriously injured or even killed during the hunt. The lion kicked in the jaw by a zebra might be unable to hunt and die of starvation. So in every hunt, the hunter must be prepared to die. But this threat gives the hunter the advantage because it ensures that they will operate at peak performance level, completely at attention, keenly observant of everything in their environment, and fully in charge at the moment of action.”

Jose Stevens

The Power Path: The Shaman's Way to Success in Business and Life. Dr. Jose Stevens and Lena Stevens. ISBN 978-1577312178.

Life, Death, Way, Success

“No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours.”

Jonathan M. Sewall (1748–1808) American poet

Epilogue to Cato, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Written for the Bow Street Theatre, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

“In the desperate situation of Britain today, our party needs the support of all who value the traditional ideals of Toryism: compassion, and concern for the individual and his freedom; opposition to excessive State power; the right of the enterprising, the hard-working and the thrifty to succeed and to reap the rewards of success and pass some of them on to their children; encouragement of that infinite diversity of choice that is an essential of freedom; the defence of widely-distributed private property against the Socialist State; the right of a man to work without oppression by either employer or trade union boss. There is a widespread feeling in the country that the Conservative party has not defended these ideals explicitly and toughly enough, so that Britain is set on a course towards inevitable Socialist mediocrity. That course must not only be halted, it must be reversed.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in Finchley (31 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102605 Shadow Secretary for Environment

Children, Feeling, Support, Freedom

“Why should any man have power over any other man's faith, seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?”

George Fox (1624–1691) English Dissenter and founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Quoted in "Memoir of George Fox", The Friends' Library: comprising journals, doctrinal treatises, and other writings of members of the Religious Society of Friends, edited by William Evans and Thomas Evans (1837) volume 1, page 76

Faith, Christ

“Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory. Thank you all. May God bless.”

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

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

God, Freedom, Victory

“The kind of thing which I collect I can always carry back with me to the studio and study at leisure. I am fascinated by the whole problem of the tensions produced by the power of growth.”

Graham Sutherland (1903–1980) English artist

Quoted in Noël Barber, Pierre Jeannerat de Beerski, "Conversations with Painters" (1964), p. 45

Problem, Study

“Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man's activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done; the historian's business was to follow the track of the energy; to find where it came from and where it went to; its complex source and shifting channels; its values, equivalents, conversions.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

World, Business, Nature

“The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell ain't half full.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter III

Men, God, Hell, Sleep

“Group organization is to be the new method in politics, the basis of our future industrial system, the foundation of international order. Group organization will create the new world we are now blindly feeling after, for creative force comes from the group, creative power is evolved through the activity of the group life.”

Mary Parker Follett The New State

Source: The New State, 1918, p. 3

Life, World, Feeling, Future

“I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power — it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope. You gotta give them hope.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

From a tape recording (1977-11-18) to be played in the event of his assassination, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), p. 277

People, Hope, Personality

“The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

Lee Atwater (1951–1991) American political consultant and strategist

Source: Interview in Life (January 1991)

Truth, Family, Feeling, Soul

“And it is just as important for the Republicans to read Jefferson's words because they are as bad and perhaps worse than the Democrats. As the decades of Democratic abuse of America's young unfolded, the Republicans have been utterly craven, seeking to save the young, the Constitution, and the republic with words alone when in opposition, and doing virtually nothing substantive to arrest the republic's decline when they hold power. Today, the Republicans cower, mumble, and equivocate when called 'extremists' by those heroic Democratic champions of murdering the unborn, they follow like murmuring sheep the shrill martial words of Senators Graham and McCain and so get young Americans uselessly killed and maimed in wars that are either unnecessary or ones they have no intention of winning, and they are barely brave enough to raise economic points and words of I-told-you-so to oppose the coming, liberty-killing indentured servitude of America's young in the name of Obamacare. Indeed, the Republicans seem increasingly like those gassy, self-righteous, and hell-bound rhetoricians.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention. 2010s

War, Hell, Reading

“My distinction is, that in incorrect wills the Court may take liberties, but that if the words are correct they have no power to make any alteration.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Doe et dem. Dacre v. Dacre (1798), 2 Bos. & Pull. 260.

“The overall agenda here is quite simply the ruling classes, or the classes of Europe intend to stride on to the world stage as a powerful economic entity. And they want to be as powerful as the US, meaning they want a stronger foreign policy and a military wing to back them up. But I can assure the Government that the debate will be a very intensive debate, a very vigorous debate and I think the benefit perhaps this time is that certain distractions that were raised the last time would be set aside, and therefore we can concentrate on the more fundamental issues. […] Take for example this notion that Irish youth would be conscripted into an army. The only people I heard that from was Government ministers in the course of the campaign who said this is being said. Nobody here raised any such red herring. These were the so-called concerns that were being addressed. But the major concerns as to what the Treaty was really about has not been changed one iota.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

breakingnews.ie http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eykfojojqlkf/

People, Youth, World, Thinking

“This Conference:… (3) recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ; (4) while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Resolution 1.10 on Human Sexuality, Lambeth Conference 1988.
Associated quotations

Love, God, People, Fear

“When a San Shaman goes into a trance, he harnesses that power, becomes part of the world beyond, becomes invisible to the singers and dancers around him, and draws images on the rock face. Ask the San who drew the images, and they say the spirits. And the rock face is more than a surface for the paint; it is the boundary of this world and the world beyond. …part of the meaning of it all, and the rock shelter itself assumes a special status, a place of veneration.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

World, Parting, Drawing, Painting

“The power of God is the worship He inspires…. The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.”

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

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 12: Religion and Science.

Death, God, Religion, Hope

“We are returned to mystery and the power of cooperating with life—rather than, as so often now, working against it.”

Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986) Canadian-American poet

On organic farming, in Belasco, Warren James, 2007, "The Organic Paradigm" http://books.google.com/books?id=4-8Tcsb2PHwC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT63#v=onepage&q&f=false, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0801473292, p. 69.

Life

“You don't have to start a fight
I'm a man who can't say no
If you've got a little risky business
Just point me where you want to go
Take me to the power
Take me to the heat
Take me to the cleaners
If it's open to the street
Something's got to pay off
Something's got to break
Someone's got a fortune that they're begging
Me to take.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Easy Money.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

Business, Fight

“Meryl Streep, in her Protestant way, is stuck on words; she flashes clever accents as a mask for her deeper failures. (And she cannot deliver a Jewish line; she destroyed Nora Ephron’s snappy dialogue in Hearburn.) Streep’s work doesn’t travel. Try dubbing her for movie houses in India: there’d be nothing left, just that bony, earnest horse face moving its lips. Imagine, on the other hand, lesser technicians like Hedy Lammarr, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner: these women have an international and universal appeal, crossing the centuries. They would have been beautiful in Egypt, Greece, Rome, medieval Burgundy, or eighteenth-century Paris. Susan Hayward played Bathsheba. Try to picture Streep in a Bible epic! Streep is incapable of playing the great legendary or mythological roles. She has no elemental power, no smouldering sensuality.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 16

Women, Beauty, Way, Travel

“(When) the people of the land no longer have the power to select and install their leaders, the chiefs lose their mana or power.”

Asesela Ravuvu (1931–2008) He loved nature and the outdoors. He 3 main principles in life were love all, hardwork and honesty.

Interview with Pacific Journalism Online, 28 May 2000

People

“Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.”

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

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Life, World, Fear, Water

“There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power.”

Norman Lamont (1942) British politician

Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity. Hansard, HC 6Ser vol 226 cols 284-5 (9 June 1993) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-09/Debate-1.html. In his resignation speech to the House of Commons.

Way, Decision

“Social thinking dilutes most personal power.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 64

Thinking, Personality

“The party in power, like Jonah's gourd, grew up quickly, and will quickly fall.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

As quoted in David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (1994) by James Atkins Shackford, p. 107

“Assurance of hope is more than life. It is health, strength, power, vigor, activity, energy, manliness, beauty.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 16.

Life, Health, Beauty, Hope

“The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he [Saddam Hussein] is in power.”

Carl Levin (1934) American politician

In an appearance on CNN (December 16, 2001)

War

“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

These statements have been misattributed to Mandela, as being in his inaugural speech of 10 May 1994 http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mandela.html but this is not the case. Rather, they originate with author Marianne Williamson. Misattributed

God, People, World, Fear

“In Brazil as in the United States, we find two voices of a New World promise of happinessː a promise to raise up human life to the exuberance of nature itself while breaking down the hierarchies and privileges that keep people distant from one another. A society of originals whose enhanced powers and self-possession enable them to accept one another more fully is the aim of this American and Brazilian dream. Translated into another, more universal vocabulary, this longing represents one form of the effort to reconcile a pagan ambition of greatness with a Christian idea of tenderness, purging the former of its impulse toward masterfulness and the latter of its knack for resentment. Thus, empowerment and solidarity can come more fully together.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998), p. 126

Life, People, World, Dreams

“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. … [T]rust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”

Mary Schmich (1953) American columnist

"Wear Sunscreen" (1997)

Youth, Beauty, Way, Imagination

“There is power in forgiveness.”

Phil McGraw (1950) American television host, psychologist, actor and film producer

Forgiveness

“I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.”

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

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

“My object in all my proceeding has been simply to establish the independence of Ireland for the benefit of all the people of Ireland - noblemen, clergymen, judges, professional men - in fact, all Irishmen. I sought that object first, because I thought it was our right; because I thought, and think still, national independence was the right of the people of this country. And secondly, I admit, that being a man who loves retirement, I never would have engaged in politics did I not think it necessary to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible scenes the country presents - the pauperism, and starvation, and crime, and vice, and the hatred of all classes against each other. I thought there should be an end to that horrible system, which while it lasted, gave me no peace of mind, for I could not enjoy anything in my country, so long as I saw my countrymen forced to be vicious, forced to hate each other, and degraded to the level of paupers and brutes. This is the reason I engaged in politics.”

John Martin (1812–1875) (1812-1875) Irish nationalist activist

Love, Men, Hate, People

“O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Beauty

“Iraqi fighters on the front lines, You courageous officers and soldiers who have been fighting valiantly and efficiently — you have restored the glories of your great Iraq. You have proved that you are the true descendants of those great fighters throughout the ages. You have given the most remarkable example of Arab military power, of which the Arab nation is in need today and tomorrow in its struggle to maintain its existence and integrity, and to restore its usurped rights and territories.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Age, Courage, Fight

“The mysterious power of harmony
Will expiate a heavy delusion
And tame a revolting desire.”

Evgeny Baratynsky (1800–1844) Russian poet

Sacred song heals the sick spirit

“It is due to him that the Roman concepts of public duty and service are still a living force among us. Historians have denied him the name of genius which they grant readily to Alexander and Julius and Napoleon; but if it be not genius to re-make and re-direct the world by a courageous realism and supreme powers of character and mind, then the word has no meaning in human speech..”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

World, Courage

“I know the way, what I have to walk. I know the spiritual power, world-creating energy, what I have to lay its account with. There's no doubt: we come out into a better still world part and we will be delighted in unfailing fairnesses.”

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853–1919) painter from Hungary

The Otherworld

World, Way, Parting

“I am trying to convince people--not only the public, but lawmakers and people in power--that investing in the frontier of science, however remote it may seem in its relevance to what you're doing today, is a way of stockpiling the seed corns of future harvests of this nation… Advancing a frontier--history has shown--has advanced a culture ever since the industrial revolution got underway.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s

People, Way, History, Science

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Life, Death, War, People

“The law has armed the High Court of Justice with the power, and imposed on it the duty of preventing brevi manu and by summary proceedings any attempt to interfere with the administration of justice. It is on that ground, and not on any exaggerated notion of the dignity of individuals that insults to Judges are not allowed.”

Charles Bowen (1835–1894) English judge

In re Johnson (1887), L. R. 20 Q. B. D. 74.

Justice, Law

“Now, suppose that the English community and the army were to leave India, taking with them all their cannons and their splendid weapons and all else, who then would be the rulers of India?…. Is it possible that under these circumstances two nations—the Mohammedans and the Hindus—could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible and the inconceivable… But until one nation has conquered the other and made it obedient, peace cannot reign in the land.”

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898), Speech in March 1888, Quoted by Dilip Hiro, "The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan" https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/longest-august-unflinching-rivalry-between-india-and-pakistan

Peace, Hope, Communication

“In Orwell’s 1984, all Party members must assemble for a “Two Minutes Hate” session where they watch a propaganda film showing the Party’s enemies. The establishment of the Virtual Panopticon insures that these group meetings aren’t necessary. Those in power now have the resources to deliver a political message tailored to the specific fears of the individual citizen. Yes, we’ll still have political rallies and conventions, but these will be empty gestures retained from the past.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of Surveillance States (2014)

Hate, Fear, Past

“By making social hierarchies and the reproduction of these hierarchies appear based upon the hierarchy of ‘gifts’, merits, or skill established and ratified by its sanctions, or, in a word, by converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies, the educational system fulfils a function of legitimation which is more and more necessary to the perpetuation of the ‘social order’ as the evolution of the power relationship between classes tends more completely to exclude the imposition of a hierarchy based upon the crude and ruthless affirmation of the power relationship.”

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1973), p. 84

Education, Appearance

“[T]he production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it, the heat would be useless.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Birth

“For millennia, the dialectic of vilification and deification and, more generally, of invalidation and validation—excluding the individual from the group as an evil outsider or including him in it as a member in good standing—was cast in the imagery and rhetoric of magic and religion. … With the decline of the religious world view and the ascent of the scientific method during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the religious rhetoric of validation and invalidation was gradually replaced by the scientific. One of the most dramatic results of this transformation is the lexicon of psychiatric diagnoses functioning as a powerful, but largely unacknowledged, rhetoric of rejection and stigmatization.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"The Sane Slave: Social Control and Legal Psychiatry," American Criminal Law Review, vol. 10 (1971), p. 333.

World, Religion, Evil

“But on what basis should the three branches of government be divided? It came down to two dueling ideas: Madison's proposal of an executive, judicial and legislative branch, and Georgia's Joseph Morton's proposal to dole out power according to, "The presence, forbearance, rectictude and largeosity of one's 'Plums and Carrot'." After much deliberation, it was decided Madison's proposal would be accepted, Morton only relenting after the Constitutional Convention agreed to proclaim him "impressive."”

Jon Stewart book America

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004)

Idea

“He [the artist in general] ought to have 'these powerful organs of expression' — colour and chiaroscuro — entirely at his command, that he may use them in every possible form, as well as that he may do with the most perfect freedom; therefore, whether he wishes to make the subject of a joyous, solemn, or meditative character, by flinging over it the cheerful aspect which the sun bestows, by a proper disposition of shade, or by the appearances that beautify its arising or its setting, a true "General Effect" should never be lost sight of.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Text for the 'Old Sarum', print in 'English Landscape' 1835/36, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 380
1830s

Freedom, Appearance, Sun, Perfection

“We shall never recover the true apostolic energy, and be endued with power from on high, as the first disciples were, 'till we recover the lost faith.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 237.

Faith

“History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

As quoted in Essays on Freedom and Power, Introduction, p. xlvii (1949) https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Essays%20on%20Freedom%20and%20Power_3.pdf

Men, History

“I must give some attention to the delicate question of religion, on which I have touched already. In my father's generation this question still was discussed with passion. Since then a sort of truce has existed in the countries of the West, while in the communist states of the East atheism has been made into the State religion. It is not advisable to blow on the embers of such controversies. But as I am talking about the limitations of our physical world picture I cannot but say that I do not believe in transgressions of the laws of nature. As these laws are of a statistical nature, and therefore allow deviations from the norm, I must define more clearly what I mean. The statistical deviations themselves obey certain laws. The miraculous events of religious tradition, however, are of a different kind, they lie on a different plane altogether; they are meant to prove something lying entirely beyond scientific consideration, such as the power of prayer, the intervention of divine power for or against certain men or nations.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Men, Lie, World, Religion

“While it is true that we are paying out far more money and maintaining a much stronger Military Establishment than ever before, because of the conditions stated, we have been able to pursue a moderate course. Our people have had all the war, all the taxation, and all the military service that they want. They have therefore wished to emphasize their attachment to our ancient policy of peace. They have insisted upon economy. They have supported the principle of limitation of armaments. They have been able to do this because of their position and their strength in numbers and in resources. We have a tremendous natural power which supplements our arms. We are conscious that no other nation harbors any design to put us in jeopardy.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Money, War, People, Peace

“In theory, there were no legal limits to the monarch’s power over his realm. In practice, however, the king was bound by the laws and customs of the land, and exercising his authority depended on the agreement of France’s elite: the nobility and the clergy.”

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski (1971) Historian

The French Revolution (Nelson Modern History) p. 17 (Melbourne, 2016)

Law, Exercises, Dependency

“In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The United States (1971)

“…understanding information entropy in the power grid per kilowatt of power delivered or the radio frequency communication power expended within the power grid per kilowatt of power delivered will be more valuable than understanding the detailed packet structure of a half-dozen supervisory control and data acquisition protocols.”

Stephen F Bush

Bush, Stephen F., Smart Grid: Communication-Enabled Intelligence for the Electric Power Grid, ISBN: 978-1-119-97580-9, 576 pages, March 2014, Wiley-IEEE Press.

Communication, Understanding

“Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything.”

Greg Bear book Eon

Source: Eon (1985), p. 73

Feeling, Hell, Understanding

“Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

Life, Men, Law, Strong

“Developing a culture of peace requires education for peace. Everyone — not only children — should be educated in compromise, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, compassion, restoration, mediation and reconciliation.6 Negotiation skills must be taught so as to prevent breaches of the peace and other forms of violence as well as to ensure a peaceful continuation of life after conflict. A philosophical paradigm change is necessary to break out of the prevailing culture of violence, the logic of power, practices of economic exploitation, cultural imperialism and impunity. A road map to this culture of peace entails a strategy to identify and remove obstacles, among which are the arms race, unilateralism and the tendency to apply international law à la carte.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

Life, Children, Education, Peace

“My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Call for Reckoning http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/transcript3.php3 - Pew Forum conference (25 January 2002). N.b. this speech was later modified into an article - God's Justice and Ours http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32 which repeats much the same points. 2000s

Law

“Moved by a generous eagerness to turn men's attention to the power which dwelt in circumstances, Mr. Owen devised the instructive phrase, that "man's character was formed for him and not by him." He used the unforgettable inference that "man is the creature of circumstances." The school of material improvers believed they could put in permanent force right circumstances. The great dogma was their charter of encouragement. To those who hated without thought It seemed a restrictive doctrine to be asked to admit that there were extenuating circumstances in the career of every rascal. To the clergy with whom censure was a profession, and who held that all sin was wilful, man being represented as the "creature of circumstances," appeared a denial of moral responsibility. When they were asked to direct hatred against error, and pity the erring — who had inherited so base a fortune of incapacity and condition — they were wroth exceedingly, and said it would be making a compromise with sin. The idea of the philosopher of circumstances was that the very murderer in his last cell had been born with a staple in his soul, to which the villainous conditions of his life had attached an unseen chain, which had drawn him to the gallows, and that the rope which was to hang him was but the visible part. Legislators since that day have come to admit that punishment is justifiable only as far as it has preventive influence. To use the great words of Hobbes, "Punishment regardeth not the past, only the future."”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Life, Men, Hate, School

“Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Quotes about power page 76

Quotes about power
page 76