Power quotes
1.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside power — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them."
"Our power is not so much in us as through us."
"A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend."
"The measure of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it."
"The dangers of unexamined and unregulated monopoly power, particularly in the state executive, are hardly news. The right reaction is not passive acquiescence."
"The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky."
"You may cut off the heads of every rich man now living--of every statesman--every literary, and every scientific authority, without in the least changing the social situation. Artists, of course, disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. Corporations are not elevators, but levellers, as I see them."
"Thus the will to power strives towards oppositions, towards displeasure. There is a will to suffering at the foundation of all organic life (contrary to "happiness" as "goal")."
"The will to power can express itself only against resistances; it seeks that which resists it--this is the native tendency of theamoeba when it extends its pseudopodia and gropes around."
"Words are containers for power"
"The look of a king is itself a deed."
"A garden full of sweet odours is a garden full of charm, a most precious kind of charm not to be implanted by mere skill in horticulture or power of purse, and which is beyond explaining. It is born of sensitive and very personal preferences yet its appeal is almost universal."
"How few writers can prostitute all their powers!"
"God is not Love in the East. He is Power, although Mercy may temper it."
"Anyone who is kind to man knows the fragmentariness of most men, and wants to arrange a society of power in which men fall naturally into a collective wholeness, since they cannot have an individual wholeness. In this collective wholeness they will be fulfilled. But if they make efforts at individual fulfilment, they must fail for they are by nature fragmentary."
"There are many different kinds of power. True power comes from serving and helping others. Such behavior makes people respect you. They are willing to listen to your views and advice, and they support you. The energy of many people is thus channeled through one person. This kind of power is positive and authentic."
"There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice."
"The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government."
"The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts."
"Power gives no purchase to the hand, it will not hold, soon perishes, and greatness goes."
