quotations about power
To come under siege ... was the inevitable fate of power.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint.
SIR J. STEPHEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
What elements of power we wield! Truth unmixed with error, flashing as God's own lightning in its brightness, resistless if properly wielded, as that living flame!
T. M. EDDY
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
One of the tremendous evils of the world is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands. Half a dozen men may, at this moment, light the fires of war through the world, may convulse all civilized nations, sweep earth and sea with armed hosts, spread desolation through the fields and bankruptcy through cities, and make themselves felt by some form of suffering through every household in Christendom.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What Desires Are Politically Important?
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What Desires Are Politically Important?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, The Great Quotations
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
MARGARET THATCHER
U. S. News & World Report, vol. 104
But whatever gives power is also potentially dangerous. What can make others anxious is a potentially destructive power; and if it can harm others it might also destroy its owner.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
Symbolic Wounds
Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Many have turned an eager ear to the siren call of power--and found themselves drowning instead.
ROY THOMAS & CLARA NOTO
Red Sonja, vol. 1, no. 3
Power is ever stealing from the many to the few; the manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
Lectures and Speeches
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful, is that they can take your life; but the same thing can be said of the most weak.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
HAROLD MACMILLAN
attributed, The New Anatomy of Britain
Never doubt what small men will do for great power.
PAOLO BACIGALUPI
The Windup Girl
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Power tires only those who do not have it.
GIULIO ANDREOTTI
London Independent, April 5, 1992
The supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough