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Quotes about power

213 quotes from 148 people

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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.
George Orwell1903–1950Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.
George Orwell1903–1950The Prevention of Literature (1946)
- Government
Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.
George Orwell1903–1950Notes on Nationalism (1945)
- Patriotism
A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.
George Orwell1903–1950The Prevention of Literature (1946)
- Government
Feminism, coveting social power, is blind to women’s cosmic sexual power.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 52
- Women
Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire … Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.
Pericles494–429 BCHistory of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, chapter 63: Pericles’ third speech
There are three fundamental states of social being: tyranny (you do what I want), slavery (I do what you want), or negotiation.
Jordan Petersonborn 1962Beyond Order (2021), p. 278
We practically wiped this nation clean of Marxists.
Augusto Pinochet1915–2006As quoted in Hoy magazine (Chile), 23 February 1988
- Politics
When they’re standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.
Terry Pratchett1948–2015The Carpet People (1971; 1992)
- Comedy
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
Thomas Pynchonborn 1937Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Part 3, Proverbs for Paranoids
- Thinking
People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they’ll join your side.
Condoleezza Riceborn 1954Advice to her protégée Kiron Skinner while Provost of Stanford University, as quoted in James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans (2004), p. 227
A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick⁠—you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.
Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919National Duties (Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick) (1901)
- Leadership
- Wisdom
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778The Social Contract (1762), Book I, Chapter IVIn context
- War & Peace
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 31
- History
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism