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Quotes about power

213 quotes from 148 people

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The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 1, Sec. 1; in Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
- Government
A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others.
Jimmy Carter1924–2024Carter, J. (1977). A government as good as its people. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Character
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Václav Havel1936–2011“A Word About Words”, speech accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (15 October 1989)
- Government
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Physiology of Marriage (1829)
Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more destructive it can be than the sword and the cannon.
Sri Aurobindo1872–1950“Kurukshetra” in Essays on the Gita (1995), p. 39
- War & Peace
Nobody in this country respects what’s weak. You believe me!
Jimmy Hoffa1913–1975CBC Television interview, Washington (1960)
- America
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895West India Emancipation (If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress) (1857)
- Freedom
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass1817–1895West India Emancipation (If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress) (1857)
- Freedom
- Justice
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
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.”
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Ozymandias (1818)In context
- Pride
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.
Emily Brontë1818–1848Wuthering Heights (1847), Chapter XIIn context
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XXIn context
- Fear
“Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”
Charles Dickens1812–1870A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book the Second: The Golden Thread, Chapter IXIn context
- Envy
Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
Charles Dickens1812–1870A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book the Third: The Track of a Storm, Chapter XVIn context
- History
All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.
Mark Twain1835–1910Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Chapter XXIIIIn context
- Comedy