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Quotes about power

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Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.
Abigail Adams1744–1818Letter to John Adams (31 March 1776), published in Familiar Letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams (1875) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 147
- Men
- Women
Persuasion is better than Force.
Aesop620–564 BCAesop’s Fables (6th century BC), The Gamecocks and the Partridge – The Dove and the CrowIn context
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Aesop620–564 BCAesop’s Fables (6th century BC), The Lion and the Mouse – The Fawn and His MotherIn context
- Justice
Union is strength.
Aesop620–564 BCAesop’s Fables (6th century BC), The Goat and the Ass – The Two Men Who Were EnemiesIn context
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975Crises of the Republic (1969)
- Politics
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Part 3, Chapter 10
- Government
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
Aung San Suu Kyiborn 1945Freedom from Fear (1991)
- Fear
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
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon1561–1626Essex’s Device (1595)
For knowledge itself is power.
Francis Bacon1561–1626Meditationes Sacræ [Sacred Meditations] (1597), “De Hæresibus” [Of Heresies]
- Knowledge
If there is a devil in human history, that devil is the principle of command.
Mikhail Bakunin1814–1876“On the Program of the Alliance” (1871), in Bakunin on Anarchy (1971), translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff
- History
All human power is a compound of time and patience.
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Eugénie Grandet (1833), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, ch. VI
- Time
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Physiology of Marriage (1829)
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
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?
Edward Bernays1891–1995Propaganda (1928), p. 71