Quotes on Power

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him.

It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disenfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness.

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

All power is a trust, that we are accountable for its exercise.

How many undervalue the power of simplicity ! But it is the real key to the heart.

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life, - there, if one must speak out, the real man.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.

Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.

All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.