Motivational Quotes

Power

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

Best Quotes about Power

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Carnegie, Dale

We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.

Lerner, Max

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.

Syrus, Publilius

Our power is in our ability to decide.

Fuller, Buckminster

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Colton, Charles Caleb

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it.

Charles Caleb Colton

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time that the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

Foucault, Michel

10.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

Hugo, Victor

11.

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil-the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.

Jordan, William George

12.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Weil, Simone

13.

To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

14.

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

Cotvos

15.

Man was predestined to have free will.

Luyah, Hal

16.

I shan't be pulling the levers there but I shall be a very good back-seat driver.

Thatcher, Margaret

17.

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

18.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

A. Bartlett Giamatti

19.

Where does virgin wool come from? The sheep that runs the fastest.

Banks, Harry F.

20.

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

Kazantzakis, Nikos

21.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

22.

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

Thatcher, Margaret

23.

Power over a man's subsistence amounts to power over his will.

Hamilton, Alexander

24.

Self-will so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.

Cecil, Richard

25.

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

Macmillan, Harold

26.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

27.

Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

Woodrow Wilson

28.

There is an urgent need -- in fact a national survival need -- for invigorating intellectual life, for upgrading the general regard for intellectual excellence. The United States must experience an intellectual renaissance or it will experience defeat. The time cannot be far off -- if indeed it is not already here -- when the strength of a nation, measured in terms of any kind of world competition, will depend less on the number of its bombs than on the number of its learned men.

Roper, Elmo

29.

I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me..

Rilke, Rainer Maria

30.

Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.

Morgenthau, Hans J.

31.

Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.

Billings, Josh

32.

Purchasing power is a license to purchase power.

Vaneigem, Raoul

33.

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

34.

When the will is ready the feet are light.

Proverb

35.

No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated.

Seneca

36.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

Barthes, Roland

37.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

Orwell, George

38.

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

Malcolm X

39.

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

Proverb, Spanish

40.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.

Lao-Tzu

41.

All personal, psychological, social, and institutionalized domination on this earth can be traced back to its source: the phallic identities of men.

Dworkin, Andrea

42.

A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength. [Proverbs 24:5]

Bible

43.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

44.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Frost, Robert

45.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

Cooley, Charles Horton

46.

What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

Bible

47.

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

Vizinczey, Stephen

48.

The point of power is always in the present moment.

Hay, Louise L.

49.

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

50.

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

Vere, Sir Aubrey De