Power quotes
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside power — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power ... If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn't use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That's why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities."
"Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief."
"Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power."
"The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness."
"When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna."
"You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention."
"The power of the people pervading the proposed system, together with the strong confederation of the states, will form an adequate security against every danger that has been apprehended."
"Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size."
"Power must never be trusted without a check."
"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses."
"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."
"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent."
"A cult is a religion with no political power."
"The first maxim of a man who loves liberty, should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well being of society."
"You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings."
"Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it."
"He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander."
"There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence."
"Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues."
"There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords."
