Power Quotes

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
– General Douglas MacArthur
To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.
– George MacDonald
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
– James Madison
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
– James Madison
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
– James Madison
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
– Mao Tse-Tung
Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.
– Orison Swett Marden
Power gravitates to the man who knows how.
– Orison Swett Marden
What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?
– Orison Swett Marden
Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
– Thurgood Marshall
I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.
– Groucho Marx
A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
– Henri Matisse
Sometimes power is all a person has, so they will protect it even unto their own destruction, for without power they have nothing.
– Bryant H. McGill
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
– John Stuart Mill
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
– John Stuart Mill
Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.
– C. Wright Mills
Question: Why are we Masters of our Fate, the captains of our souls? Because we have the power to control our thoughts, our attitudes. That is why many people live in the withering negative world. That is why many people live in the Positive Faith world.
– Alfred A. Montapert
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
– Charles de Montesquieu
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
– Jim Morrison
The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.
– Toni Morrison
The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.
– Lewis Mumford
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
– Agnes de Mille
Knowledge is power, if you know it about the right person.
– Ethel Watts Mumford
A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
– Ralph Nader
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started. What I'm trying to do is to create modern equivalents that speak to me of those tropes that have more of the original power.
– Christopher Nolan
Hateful is the power, and pitiable is the life, of those who wish to be feared rather than loved.
– Cornelius Nepos
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
– P. J. O'Rourke
The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.
– David M. Ogilvy
In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential... it's no different in the financial realm.
– Suze Orman
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
– George Orwell
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
– George Orwell
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
– George Orwell
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
– Thomas Paine
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
– Blaise Pascal
The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.
– M. Scott Peck
Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
– M. Scott Peck
The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune.
– William Penn
An alliance with a powerful person is never safe.
– Phaedrus
The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
– Mary Pickford
If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.
– Peace Pilgrim
The way of peace is the way of love. Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things.
– Peace Pilgrim
Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.
– William Pitt
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.
– William Pitt
How can you consider flower power outdated? The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?
– Robert Plant
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
– Plato
I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions.
– Plutarch
The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced - the just demands of peace and security will be met - or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.
– Colin Powell
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
– Pittacus
The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.
– Dan Quayle
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.
– Nido Qubein
How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
– Francois Rabelais
Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.
– Ayn Rand
God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
– Ayn Rand
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
– Ayn Rand
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.
– Ayn Rand
All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.
– Ronald Reagan
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
– Ronald Reagan
Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.
– Jules Renard
Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold and silver, it attracts with tenfold power.
– Jean Paul Richter
Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
– Anthony Robbins
One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
– Anthony Robbins
Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
– Anthony Robbins
Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.
– Anthony Robbins
Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.
– Nelson Rockefeller
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
– Jean Rostand
Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.
– Wilma Rudolph
What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
– Salman Rushdie
The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.
– John Ruskin
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
– Bertrand Russell
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
– Bertrand Russell
With power comes the abuse of power. And where there are bosses, there are crazy bosses. It's nothing new.
– Judd Rose
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
– Margaret Thatcher
All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.
– Francis Thompson
The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
– Alvin Toffler
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
– Leo Tolstoy
Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.
– Anthony Trollope
In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.
– A. J. P. Taylor
Thoughts have power; thoughts are energy. And you can make your world or break it by your own thinking.
– Susan L. Taylor
The way to have power is to take it.
– William Marcy Tweed
One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
– Morihei Ueshiba
Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
– Voltaire
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
– Voltaire
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.
– Alice Walker
Character is power.
– Booker T. Washington
There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
– Booker T. Washington
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
– George Washington
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.
– Daniel Webster
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
– Daniel Webster
To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
– Simone Weil
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
– Theodore H. White
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
– Walt Whitman
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
– Woodrow Wilson