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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"The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that."
"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now."
"In politics stupidity is not a handicap."
"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."
"Forever is composed of nows."
"For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture."
"Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it."
"Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact."
"My third maxim was to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, so that after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything in which we do not succeed is for us absolutely impossible."
"There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured."
"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself."
"What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes."
"Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power."
"A throne is only a bench covered with velvet."
"The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know."
"All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power; they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them."
"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."
"Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside"
"Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority."
