Sunday, February 5, 2017 – Absolute Power
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James Baldwin
Owning a great golf course gives you great power. ~ Donald Trump
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous. ~ Edmund Burke
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. ~ Julius Caesar
The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law. ~ Jeremy Bentham
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~ Lord Acton
Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. ~ John Adams
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? ~ Harry Shearer
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it. ~ Frank Herbert
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. ~ Thomas Paine
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason. ~ Voltaire
Every account of a higher power that I’ve seen described, of all religions that I’ve seen, includes many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. ~ Henry A. Wallace
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. ~ Frederick Douglass
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. ~ George Orwell
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. ~ George Orwell
Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility. ~ Robin Morgan
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. ~ Samuel Johnson
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. ~ Peter Drucker
Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power. ~ William James
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them. ~ Thomas Hobbes
Power without a nation’s confidence is nothing. ~ Catherine the Great
One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Power is not alluring to pure minds. ~ Thomas Jefferson
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings. ~ Denis Diderot
You must never underestimate the power of the eyebrow. ~ Jack Black
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. ~ Jimi Hendrix
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. ~ Carl Jung
The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself. ~ Noam Chomsky
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. ~ John Stuart Mill
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak. ~ John Adams
You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. ~ Michel Foucault
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. ~ Milan Kundera
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. ~ Milton Friedman
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. ~ John Quincy Adams
To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. ~ Oscar Wilde
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. ~ Henry Miller
I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine. ~ Emily Dickinson
Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ~ Carl Sagan
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, 1984
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor. ~ Neil Gaiman
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. ~ Mark Twain
Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is power. ~ Gregory Corso
What good is power when you’re too wise to use it? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong. ~ Otto von Bismarck
Just Above Sunset 