Top 100 Power Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best power quotes ever written, picked out of the full power archive on QuoteForever. You will find Frederick Lenz, Eric Hoffer, Erich Fromm and Hannah Arendt among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

The power of nature is what all art strives to be. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship.

2

Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one's companion.

3

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

4

Who holds a power but newly gained is ever stern of mood.

5

We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.

6

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

7

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

8

You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

9

I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.

10

My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.

11

Nobody before the Pythagorean had thought that mathematical relations held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred.

12

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

13

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

14

I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current; but I am not at liberty to travel that road.

15

The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State.

16

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

17

The story of Jesus is very fascinating. It still has such a tremendous power, even after 2,000 years! We don't really know if he existed as a historical figure.

18

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

19

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women.

20

Power without a nation's confidence is nothing.

21

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.

22

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

23

All political power is a trust.

24

And there is the point exactly, we are all the time blaming difficulties on to something else. Our real trouble is that we are too soft to solve the problem.

25

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

26

What makes human power erupt like a volcano? What destroy's it? The civilizations of Rome, Greece, Egypt, China were all eruptions from a human core.

27

In some small field each child should attain, within the limited range of its experience and observation, the power to draw a justly limited inference from observed facts.

28

Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the ­extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.

29

Minds think with ideas, not information No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought.

30

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.

31

A reluctant leader is highly suspicious of people who work to accumulate and hoard power.

32

Law is but a heathen word for power.

33

For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.

34

People feel powerless and useless in the world. But they can buy something. It can give them a sense of value, of power

35

Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success!

36

A man's reaction to his appetites and impulses when they are roused gives the measure of that man's character. In these reactions are revealed the man's power to govern or his forced servility to yield.

37

Populists believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of the "conspirator in chief" from these people.

38

People.. especially people in positions of power.. have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently.

39

Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.

40

If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

41

There is a source of power in each of us that we don't realize until we take responsibility.

42

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

43

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

44

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

45

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.

46

Victory; a matter of staying power.

47

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

48

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

49

The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.

50

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

51

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

52

Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.

53

The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist.

54

We are not depending on a reed shaken by the wind, but on the Priniciple of Life Itself, for all that we have or ever shall need. It is not some Power, or a great Power, it is all power.

55

One never paints violently enough.

56

My whole mission in life is to help us find the power we lack to create the world we want.

57

It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential.

58

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

59

All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.

60

A weak mind is the only defect out of our power to mend.

61

There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

62

We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.

63

In a democratic nation, power must be linked with responsibility, and obliged to defend and justify itself within the framework of the general good.

64

No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand.

65

Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

66

One aspect of power is to bring our past-life awareness into this lifetime. The second aspect of power is to go into new fields of awareness that we have never experienced.

67

The universe is a matrix. It's a doorway into itself. But that doorway remains invisible if you don't have enough energy flowing through you.

68

Power is the thing that holds a band of perception together, and a band of perception is life for those who perceive in that band. If the band of perception were to go away, they would not exist.

69

Power is the big obstacle, or one of them, that you have to overcome and learn to deal with effectively before you can reach enlightenment.

70

Power is emotionless; yet one with personal power will experience more emotions.

71

You can gain power by avoidance. You can gain power by doing certain things. You can gain much more power by meditating.

72

That is why we live in a world where there are so many wars and so much destruction. This is an arena of power.

73

Human beings actually have quite a bit of willpower. They don't know too much about it, but they have quite a bit.

74

It is harder to develop your occult or psychic body when you are dead because all planes meet in the physical.

75

If you have power, you might be able to heal a person. You could actually get inside their cell structures and create a change.

76

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

77

To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.

78

There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power.

79

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police and military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed.

80

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

81

The object of power is power.

82

But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.

83

The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.

84

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

85

Extensive powers not exercised as far as was necessary have, I believe, scarcely ever failed to ruin the possessor.

86

power, after it has ceased from troubling, is the dominant passion in human nature.

87

Power tires only those who do not have it.

88

The power of one, if fearless and focused, is formidable, but the power of many working together is better.

89

I have more influence now than when I had the power.

90

The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres.

91

Since 2000, we've seen base power rates rise by 50%.

92

Large corporations and unions know the power of being big enough to bargain for better rates.

93

Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes.

94

the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

95

power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money.

96

The only limits of power are the bounds of belief.

97

Don't wait for anyone to deputize you or authorize you or empower you. You have to just start out with yourself...and put one foot in front of the other.

98

The problem with addicted people, communities, corporations, or countries is that they tend to lie, cheat, or steal to get their 'fix.' Corporations are addicted to profit and governments to power.

99

I'm not into power for the sake of it.

100

While Thee I seek, protecting Power, Be my vain wishes stilled; And may this consecrated hour With better hopes be filled.

More Power quotes

This is the short list. The full power quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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