Power Quotes

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon? laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution? these can lift at a colossal humbug? push it a little? weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, chapter 10 (1916)

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will know peace.

Jimi Hendrix

Money is the most egalitarian force in society. It confers power on whoever holds it.

Roger Sta

Pick a man for his human qualities, his values, his compatibility with you, rather than what he represents in status, power or good looks.

Carol Botwin

Physics is the science of all the tremendously powerful invisibilities - Of magnetism, electricity, gravity, light, sound, cosmic rays. Physics is the science of the mysteries of the universe. How could anyone think it dull?

Dick Francis, Twice Shy

When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half - Blood Prince, 2005

Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being.

Charles Dudley Warne

Without relationships, no matter how much wealth, fame, power, prestige and seeming success by the standards and opinions of the world one has, happiness will constantly eluded him.

Sidney Madwed

I regret to say that we of the F. B. I. are powerless to act in cases of oral - Genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

J. Edgar Hoove

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Aldous Huxley

The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.

William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2

It is easier to talk about money - - And much easier to talk about sex - - Than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.

Smiley Blanton

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947

The greatest power is often simple patience.

E. Joseph Crossman

To conquer others is to have power, to conquer yourself is to know the way.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Of women I do not wish them to have power over men but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Austin Powers Yeah, baby, yeah.

Austin Powers International Man of Mystery

What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Aristotle

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

Plutarch

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 2

You can make those promises with just as much passion the second time around. Such is the regenerative power of the human heart.

Marion Wink, O Magazine, 2003

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aelius Aurelius

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

Nadine Gordime

Either you think - - Or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

F Scott

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813

This ONLY is denied God The power to undo the past.

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you speak.

Toni Morrison, American writer (1931 -)

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton, 1887

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Epictetus

The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.

Sir B. Brodie

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

Author Unknown

Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth - Grade math, you can do it.

Peter Lynch

Refrain from doing ill; for one all powerful reason, lest our children should copy our misdeeds; we are all too prone to imitate whatever is base and depraved.

Juvenal

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.

Jon Wynne Tyson