Power Quotes - Page 39

• How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.

  Robert Burns

  Powerful, Favors, Persons

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• The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.

  John Ruskin

  Inspirational, Imagination, Divine

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.152, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The Spirit power begins in directing the Animal power to other than egoistic ends.

  John Ruskin

  Spiritual, Animal, Ends

  "Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain".

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• There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.231, Penguin

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• Great is the power, great is the authority of a senate that is unanimous in its opinions.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Opinion, Authority, Senate

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• Those in supreme power always suspect and hate their next heir.

  Tacitus

  Hate, Inheritance, Heirs

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• Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

  Joan Didion

  Use, Materialistic, Guilty

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 26, 2011

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• Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

  Simone Weil

  Purity, Contemplating, Defilement

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.122, Psychology Press

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• Valor consists in the power of self recovery.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Courage, Recovery, Self

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.179, Penguin

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• Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Revenge, Grateful, People

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• It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.

  Albert Einstein

  Giving, Goal, Foundation

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.20, Open Road Media

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• Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.

  Albert Camus

  Historical, Tasks, Assassins

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• Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Self, Helping, Christianity

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• There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Powerful, Passion, Law

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• In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That's a thought I'll never endure! Never.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Demand, Endure, Subjects

  Henrik Ibsen, James Walter McFarlane, Graham Orton (1966). “The Oxford Ibsen: The lady from the sea. Hedda Gabler. The master builder”

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• If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

  Harriet Martineau

  Civilization, Half, Tests

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.156

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• The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

  Walter Benjamin

  Facts, Life Is, Construction

  Walter Benjamin, Peter Demetz (1986). “Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writing”, Schocken

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Historical, Minorities, Records

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2001). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1843 - 1871”, p.315, University of Georgia Press

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• They realize that in thirty-four months we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands of a peoples Government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Government, Hands, People

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.16, Best Books on

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• I am already kindly disposed towards you. My friendship it is not in my power to give: this is a gift which no man can make, it is not in our own power: a sound and healthy friendship is the growth of time and circumstance, it will spring up and thrive like a wildflower when these favour, and when they do not, it is in vain to look for it.

  William Wordsworth

  Spring, Men, Giving

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1907). “Letters of the Wordsworth family from 1787 to 1855”

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• If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained - then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.

  Walter Lippmann

  Law, People, Usurpers

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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• The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

  William Howard Taft

  Exercise, President, Constitution

  William Howard Taft, David Henry Burton (2009). “William Howard Taft: Essential Writings and Addresses”, p.200, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.

  May Sarton

  War, Moving, Creative

  May Sarton (2014). “Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel”, p.96, Open Road Media

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• We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.

  Joseph Joubert

  Excellence, Wells, Assured

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• Labor is the instituted means for the methodical development of all our powers under the direction and control of the will.

  J. G. Holland

  Mean, Development, Labor

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