Motivational Quotes

Power

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

- Friedman, Milton

Best Quotes about Power

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.

Hoffer, Eric

When one is willing and eager, the Gods join in.

Aeschylus

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

David Brin

Will cannot be quenched against its will.

Dante Alighieri

If you sit in judgment, investigate, if you sit in supreme power, sit in command.

Seneca

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

Niebuhr, Reinhold

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Shakespeare, William

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

A boy's will is the will of the wind.

Proverb, Norse

10.

Where there is a will there is a lawsuit.

Mizner, Addison

11.

All the power that we exercise over others depends on the power we exercise over ourselves.

Cotvos

12.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

Macarthur, Douglas

13.

Authority is not power; that's coercion. Authority is not knowledge; that's persuasion, or seduction. Authority is simply that the author has the right to make a statement and to be heard.

Kahn, Herman

14.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Hume, David

15.

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.

Proverb, Chinese

16.

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use - of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.

Robert F. Kennedy

17.

The look of a king is itself a deed.

Paul, Jean

18.

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

19.

The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

20.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Hoffer, Eric

21.

Louis the XVI knew how to love, pardon, and die: had he known how to punish, he would have known how to reign.

Tilly

22.

The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. [Job 1:21]

Bible

23.

I said to the almond tree, Friend, speak to me of God, and the almond tree blossomed.

Kazantzakis, Nikos

24.

Our power is in our ability to decide.

Fuller, Buckminster

25.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?

Lincoln, Abraham

27.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.

Mencken, H. L.

28.

Not necessity, not desire --no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything --health, food, a place to live, entertainment --they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

29.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Pitt, William

31.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

Friedman, Milton

32.

Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.

Macmillan, Harold

33.

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.

Steinem, Gloria

34.

Power's footstool is opinion and his throne the human heart.

Vere, Sir Aubrey De

35.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

36.

Power never takes a step back except in the face of more power.

Malcolm X

37.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Baltasar Gracian

38.

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

Bruyere, Jean De La

39.

Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.

Dr. Thomas Fuller

40.

Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.

Baudrillard, Jean

41.

The price of power is responsibility for the public good.

Aldrich, Withrop

42.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

43.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Baldwin, James

44.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

Henrik Ibsen

45.

Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

James A. Garfield

46.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Havel, Vaclav

47.

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Capone, Al

48.

The king goes as far as he may, not as far as he could.

Proverb, Spanish

49.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

Carnegie, Andrew

50.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.