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Quotes about power

213 quotes from 148 people

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Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Chapter XXIn context
- Fear
Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Hellas (1821), l. 195
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Ozymandias (1818)In context
- Time
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Queen Mab (1813), Canto III
- Freedom
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.”
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Ozymandias (1818)In context
- Pride
It is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.
Sydney Smith1771–1845“Female Education” (review of Thomas Broadhurst, Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of Mind, 1808), in The Edinburgh Review, No. 30 (January 1810), p. 314
- Knowledge
You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008The First Circle (1968), Ch. 17, Bobynin
- Freedom
Crave not mastery in all,
For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.
Sophocles496–406 BCOedipus the King (c. 429 BC), spoken by CreonIn context
- Pride
Of insolence is bred
The tyrant; insolence full blown,
With empty riches surfeited,
Scales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.
Then topples o’er and lies in ruin prone;
No foothold on that dizzy steep.
Sophocles496–406 BCOedipus the King (c. 429 BC), spoken by ChorusIn context
- Pride
However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.
Gloria Steinem1934–2026“If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On?” in M.S. magazine (October-November 1980)
- Government
You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself.
Max Stirner1806–1856The Ego and Its Own (1844), Cambridge 1995 ed., p. 151
- Freedom
The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all
Harriet Beecher Stowe1811–1896Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Volume II, Chapter XXIXIn context
- Slavery
For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745The Drapier’s Letters, letter iv (13 October, 1724)
- Government
Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput, Chapter VIn context
When men of talents are punished, authority is strengthened.
Tacitus55–120Annals (117), Book IV, 35.