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Quotes about power

213 quotes from 148 people

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We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018National Book Awards, November 2014
- Economics
Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.
Audre Lorde1934–1992Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”, p. 112
In the anarchic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.
John Mearsheimerborn 1947“China’s Unpeaceful Rise”, Current History (2006) vol. 105 (690) p. 162
- Politics
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
Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.
Audre Lorde1934–1992Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), “Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface”, p. 63
The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
Emma Goldman1869–1940The Individual, Society and the State (1940)
Direct action is the insistence, when faced with structures of unjust authority, on acting as if one is already free.
David Graeber1961–2020Direct Action: An Ethnography (Oakland: AK Press: 2009), p. 203
- Freedom
There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Address to the Senate (22 January 1917)
- War & Peace
Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction.
Robert Greeneborn 1959The Art of Seduction (2001)
- Love
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
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.
Tony Benn1925–2014Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
- Democracy
So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.
Thomas Hobbes1588–1679Leviathan (1651), Pt. I, Ch. 11, p. 47In context
For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence.
Benito Mussolini1883–1945“The Doctrine of Fascism”, June 1932. Quoted in Paul O’Brien, Mussolini in the First World War: The Journalist, the Soldier, the Fascist. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014
- Politics
The goals of feminism can never be achieved through evolution, but only through revolution. Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.
SFShulamith Firestone1945–2012The Dialectic of Sex (1970), ch. 2, p. 31
- Women
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.
Henry Kissinger1923–2023The White House Years (1979)
- War & Peace