I leave shreds of my soul on every experience.
Oriana FallaciRead
True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm and intelligence.
Interpretation
True power is subtle and doesn't rely on loudness or aggression, but rather on grace and intelligence.
In this quote, Oriana Fallaci emphasizes that genuine power is not about overt displays of dominance or intimidation, such as having a loud voice or a commanding presence. Instead, true power lies in the ability to influence and lead through charm, subtlety, and intellectual prowess, suggesting that effective leadership and authority stem from a deeper, more refined understanding rather than forceful posturing.
In practice
In a leadership seminar when discussing effective leadership styles.
I leave shreds of my soul on every experience.
I know ours is a world made by men for men, their dictatorship is so ancient it even extends to language.
A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will be a devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease.
You cannot govern, you cannot administrate, with an ignoramus.
What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion.
In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.
One of the advantages of being disorganized is the joy of discovery.
Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer; and only in prayer can they persevere and bear fruit.
How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.
I think I'll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up - it always does in the end.
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