Quotes on Power
"I know that in order for something to work for me, it has to be extremely powerful."
Ronnie Coleman, Power
"Never underestimate the power of wide-grip pull-ups to develop width and size."
Ronnie Coleman, Power
"What do all men with power want? More power." – The Oracle (The Matrix Reloaded)
The Matrix, Power
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without." – Merovingian (The Matrix Reloaded)
The Matrix, Society, Power
“This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther then by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases from him.: because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I have no reason to purpose that he, who would take away my liberty, would not when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him, as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Justice
“The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves.”
John Locke, Power
“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs ... has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power
“The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object....
If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Government
“As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Locke, Power, Government
“The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves.”
John Locke, Power
“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs ... has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Power
“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.”
― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Intelligence/Wisdom, Ideas, Power
“Truth is the ultimate power. When the truth comes around, all the lies have to run and hide.”
Ice Cube, Truth, Power
Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.
Clint Eastwood, Power
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo, Ideas, Power
"I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place!"
Macho Man, Power
“The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman.
The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly--the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the men in a plain light.
The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled when he cannot help humbling others.”
Robert E Lee, Power
“You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” ― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard Bach, Goals, Power
“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.”
― Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
Richard Bach, Goals, Power
“Without a strong educational system democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only key to power. It is the citadel of human freedom.”
Harry Truman, Intelligence/Wisdom, Society, Power, Freedom
“All I know is that the first step is to create a vision, because when you see the vision – the beautiful vision – that creates the want power.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Goals, Power
“Attacking people with disabilities is the lowest display of power I can think of.”
Morgan Freeman, Power
“My power is discombobulating devastating. I could feel his muscle tissues collapse under my force. It’s ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.”
- Boasting about his strength and process, Mike Tyson personifies human strength and power.
Mike Tyson, Strength, Power
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot, Goals, Power, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.”
Wendell Berry, Power
“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”
Joseph Campbell, Opportunities, Power, Life
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”
Margaret Thatcher, Power
Only through action have I unlocked the power inside of me to become the person that I’ve always wanted to be.”
Mel Robbins, Power, Goals
“She was pushed forward by something way more powerful: herself. That’s what courage is. It’s a push.”
Mel Robbins, Courage, Power
"Never underestimate your power to change."
Wayne Dyer, Goals, Power
“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.”
David Hume, Power
“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.”
Stephen Covey, Freedom, Power
“Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.”
Milton Friedman, Freedom, Power, Government
“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.”
Jordan Peterson, Life, Goals, Power
“Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, ‘He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.’”
Jordan Peterson, Life, Goals, Power
“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.”
Jordan Peterson, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Life
“The path to success will leave you callused, bruised, and very tired. It will also leave you empowered.”
David Goggins, Success, Power
“There is a powerful force unleashed when young people resolve to make a change.”
Jane Goodall, Power
“Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take a breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.”
Florence Nightingale, Life, Power, Strength
“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”
Anne Frank, Life, Wealth, Power, Success
"But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt that everyone without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with a certain heading, and this or that important, self- satisfied person would be brought before him in the role of an accused person or a witness, and if he did not choose to allow him to sit down, would have to stand before him and answer his questions."
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy), Work, Power
"Ivan Ilych never abused his power; he tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it and the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief interest and attraction of his office."
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy), Work, Power
"We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it all about—survival and growth."
Audre Lorde, Truth, Power, Life
"For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered."
Audre Lorde, Sex, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living."
Audre Lorde, Power
"Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power - not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist."
bell hooks, Power, Society
"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."
James Baldwin, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Justice
"I don’t like the look of it at all,” said the King: “however, it may kiss my hand, if it likes."
Alice in Wonderland, Power
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."
Frederick Douglass, Freedom, Power, Society
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass, Justice, Power
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass, Freedom, Power
"The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain."
Susan B Anthony, Power
"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it."
George Orwell, Power
"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
George Orwell, Power
"Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."
George Orwell, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
George Orwell, Government, Power
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
Thomas Paine, Power
"Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our existence with their power."
John Lewis, Freedom, Love, Justice, Power
"There is a power that can raise you up even from the lowliest of places and guide you to the forefront of change if you truly want to create a better world."
John Lewis, Power
"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
John Muir, Power
"There is nothing more powerful than a changed mind."
Les Brown, Power
"Never underestimate the power of a girl with a book."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Power, Sex, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. . . . As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Power, Sex, Society
"When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Power
"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
Seneca, Power
"The measure of a man is what he does with power."
Plato, Power
"Knowledge will give you power, but character respect."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Life
"Great power involves great responsibility."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Power
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truth Freedom, Power
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
George Washington, Power, Freedom
"I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be."
Thomas Jefferson, Power
"Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent."
Thomas Jefferson, Government, Power
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Thomas Jefferson, Power
"Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside."
JFK- John F. Kennedy, Power
"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."
Carl Jung, Love, Power
"Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
Aristotle, Anger and Fighting, Power
"Travel brings power and love back into your life."
Rumi, Power, Love
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."
Martin Luther King Jr., Power, Love, Justice
"We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power."
Bertrand Russell, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power
"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility."
Peter Drucker, Management, Power
"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
Oscar Wilde, Power, Sex
"I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Power
"Worry not that no one knows you; seek to be worth knowing."
Confucius, Goals, Power
"The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has."
Confucius, Power
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”