power Quotes

“The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

“Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.”

“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world”

“I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

“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. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

“To be alive──is Power.”

“Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.”

“One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.”

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

“You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?” “No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.” His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.”

To me it would not seem that a Steward who faithfully surrenders his charge is diminished in love or in honour.

Let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.

“No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.”

“The best world shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That’s why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.”

“We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.”

“Show respect for those in power, but don’t follow them blindly.”

“I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.”

“There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain...”

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.

“But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then shew likest Gods When mercy seasons justice.”

“Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord! Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”

“If men should read these words, let them know that power is a heavy burden. Seek not to be bound by its chains.”

“Money and titles may be hereditary,” she would say, “but brains are not.”

“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”

“If only the gods are willing. They rule the vaulting skies. They’re stronger than I to plan and drive things home.”

Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”

“Gandalf was shorter in stature than the other two; but his long white hair, his sweeping beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend. In his aged face under great snowy brows his eyes were set like coals that could suddenly burst into fire.”

“This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it — but he must not get it.”

“It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of this malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it.”

“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.”

“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.”

“Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”

“My father says—used to say—that there is power in self-sacrifice.”

“We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you? No? You must burry on? Ah, he’s gone. Pity.” He turned to McMurphy. “Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn’t it? Food for thought there.”

“First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives—gambling with human lives—as if you thought of yourself to be a God!”

“Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavored to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.”

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

“I didn’t say yes. I can say no to anything I say vile, and I don’t have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards—all that your can do is to have me killed.”

“Hazel’s anxiety and the reason for it were soon known to all the rabbits and there was not one who did not realize what they were up against. There was nothing very startling in what he had said. He was simply the one—as a Chief Rabbit ought to be—through whom a strong feeling, latent throughout the warren, had come to the surface.”

“Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.”

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

“It is power to do good that is fine – that, and that only.”

“We were learning how to struggle. And we were learning how powerful we are when we speak.”

“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”

“The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

“Instead of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; He could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.”

“The American institutions are democratic, not only in their principle but in all their consequences; and the people elects its representatives directly, and for the most part annually, in order to ensure their dependence. The people is therefore the real directing power; and although the form of government is representative, it is evident that the opinions, the prejudices, the interests, and even the passions of the community are hindered by no durable obstacles from exercising a perpetual influence on society.”

“The practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.”

“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”

“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows—a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose.”

“A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”

“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

“The action had taken, also, a knowledge of personal power. Water was, indeed, power here.”

“They had been just as surprised as Edmund when they saw the winter vanishing and the whole wood passing in a few hours or so from January to May. They hadn’t even known for certain (as the Witch did) that this was what would happen when Aslan came to Narnia. But they all knew that it was her spells which had produced the endless winter; and therefore they all knew when this magic spring began that something had gone wrong, and badly wrong, with the Witch’s schemes.”

“But as for Aslan himself, the Beavers and the children didn’t know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly.”

“Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability! Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you?”

“No man that hath sovereign power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner by his subjects punished. For seeing every subject is author of the actions of his sovereign, he punisheth another for the actions committed by himself.”

“Four of my teammates died not so much because Rob Hall’s systems were faulty […] but because on Everest it is the nature of systems to break down with a vengeance.”

“The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

“He said, ‘Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know’ ‘Sure are,’ I said. ‘Like matches in the hand of a three-year-old. Or automobiles in the hands of a sixteen-year-old. Or faith in God in the mind of a saint or a maniac. Or a nuclear arsenal in the hands of a movie character. Or even jumper cables and batteries in the hands of fools.‘”

“Above all, pay attention to your own hearts with their lusts, for they are ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’ Set your faces with flint-like resolve since you have all power in heaven and earth on your side.”

“By liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments; which impediments may oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement and reason shall dictate to him.”

“The attaining to this sovereign power is by two ways. One, by natural force: as when a man maketh his children to submit themselves, and their children, to his government, as being able to destroy them if they refuse; or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, giving them their lives on that condition. The other, is when men agree amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others.”

“But what about when they got there? Bahumat was supposed to be incredibly powerful. Even so, considering the legion of fierce fairies surrounding her, Kendra liked her odds.”

“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.”

“Your power is in your thoughts, so stay awake. In other words, remember to remember.”

“Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist.”

“It isn’t enough, what I’ve done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point. I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution.”

“None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow.”

“Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.”

″‘Can you see the power emotion has to distort our outlook? Makes you wonder, did you have a bad day, or did you make it a bad day.‘”

“Only fools want to be great.”

“As it chanced, [Jurgis] had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his last week’s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance of his Saturday’s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the day’s work he had done before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not the company’s business to tell him.”

“Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.”

“Perhaps I too might live free. Perhaps I too might wield the same old power that animated the ancestors, that lived in Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Nanny, Cudjoe, Malcolm X, and speak––no, act––as though my body were my own.”

“I saw them lost in conversation with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles. The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs.”

“So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona’s. Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.”

Where the Jedi courted power, the Sith lusted after it; where the Jedi believed they knew the truth, the Sith possessed it. Owned by the dark side, they ultimately became their knowledge.

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.”

Remember why the Sith are more powerful than the Jedi, Sidious: because we are not afraid to feel.

“The crews walked the blocks of the neighborhood, loud and rude, because it was only through their loud rudeness that they might feel any sense of security and power.”

“In whatever God does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others.”

“When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.”

Remember why the Sith are more powerful than the Jedi, Sidious: because we are not afraid to feel.

“The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best of him – they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience.”

“Power is a cover-up for shame. Power is frequently hierarchical. Dad can yell at anyone. Mom can yell at anyone but Dad. The oldest can yell at anyone but Mom and Dad, etc. The youngest tortures the cat.”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“This officer, given maximum power, bore minimum responsibility.”

“If you are mighty and powerful, then gain respect through knowledge and through your gentleness of speech. Don’t order things except as it is fitting. The one who provokes others gets into trouble. Don’t be haughty lest you be humbled. But also, don’t be mute lest you be chided.”

“A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength—life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof.”

“Men as fit as you, when your everyday strength is gone, can draw on a mysterious reservoir of power far greater. Then it is that you can reach for the stars. That is the way champions are made.”

“The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.”

“Once you give them the power to tell you you’re great, you’ve also given them the power to tell you you’re unworthy. Once you start caring about people’s opinions of you, you give up control.”

“What infinite heartsease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy?”

“Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous.”

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

“But I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.”

“But Taborlin knew the name of all things, and so all things were his to command.”

“Without power for the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind.”

“Martha: Our son does not have blue hair…or blue eyes, for that matter. He has green eyes…like me. George: He has blue, eyes Martha.”

″‘You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!’ said Dumbledore loudly. ‘The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort’s!‘”

“In politics, like religion, power lay in certainty - and that one man’s certainty always threatened another’s.”

“George: We got a telegram; there was a car accident, and he’s dead. POUF! … Martha: (A howl which weakens into a moan) NOOOOOOoooooo.”

“Mass movement do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”

“The breaking up of a village community, a tribe or a nation into autonomous individuals does not eliminate or stifle the spirit of rebellion against the ruling power. An effective division is one that fosters a multiplicity of compact bodies — racial, religious or economic — vying with a suspicious of each other.”

“Power is an illusion of perception.”

“A gold mine like Vegas breeds its own army, like any other gold mine. Hired muscle tends to accumulate in fast layers around money/power poles … and big money, in Vegas, is synonymous with the Power to protect it.”

“The reason King Saul is skeptical of David’s chances is that David is small and Goliath is large. Saul thinks of power in terms of physical might. He doesn’t appreciate that power can come in other forms as well - in breaking rules, in substituting speed and surprise for strength.”

“Everybody uses words to express themselves. Except me. And I bet most people don’t realize the real power of words. But I do.”

“Even as one did thy mother bear thee, she the wild cow of the cattle stalls, Ninsunna, whose head she exalted more than a husband. Royal power over the people Enlil has decreed for thee.”

“I think the Selection was meant to draw us together and remind everyone that Illéa itself was born out of next to nothing.”

“rarely discusses his plans, he knows that whenever he talks about a dream, he uses a little bit of the energy from that dream in order to do so…A Warrior of the Light knows the power of words.”

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

“The last figure of all was the most interesting—a woman even more richly dressed than the others, very tall (but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world), with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterward, when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful. It is only fair to add that Polly always said she couldn’t see anything specially beautiful about her.”

“Nobody, least of all Jadis, could have missed at that range. The bar struck the Lion fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The Lion came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before, you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.”

God has given us power and authority over the devil.

“You must understand: they fear you. There is nothing scarier in their minds than a girl who knows the power of her flames.”

“I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it – if you can understand.”

“Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, ‘Courage, dear heart,’ and the voice, she felt sure, as Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.”

“The impression of strength came from an extraordinary vitality that seemed to pulse in the very air around him”

“Across the grey hillside above them – grey, for the heather was not yet in bloom – without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest Lion that human eyes have ever seen. In describing the scene Lucy said afterwards, ‘He was the size of an elephant,’ though at another time she only said, ‘The size of a cart-horse.’ But it was not the size that mattered. Nobody dared to ask what it was. They knew it was Aslan.”

“Adults think they’re wielding power, but really power is wielding them”

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”

“My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.”

“The strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong.”

“… like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.”

“Power is habitually buried. Think of the Protectorate bunkers on Harlan’s World. Or the Caverns the Envoy Corps hid you in while you were made over in their image. The essence of control is to remain hidden from view, is it not?”

“True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”

“How should a Christian act when evil was in power?”

In the face of cold power, she is fire.

“He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness of power.”

The measure of a man is what he does when he has power.

“Offspring of endless Night, thou hast no power O’er me or any man who sees the sun.”

“It is possible that I appear to you a powerful person. I wear a uniform, I have a certain authority over those under me. But I am in prison, dear lady from Haarlem, a prison stronger than this one.”

“The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power.”

“What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful?”

“The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

“Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun.”

“It seemed to him that the Power in which he had vainly trusted among the streets and in the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge.”

“Even if the Habr Gidr were somehow crippled or destroyed, wouldn’t that just elevate the next most powerful clan? Or did the Americans expect Somalia to suddenly sprout full-fledged Jeffersonian democracy?”

“But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt that everyone without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with a certain heading, and this or that important, self- satisfied person would be brought before him in the role of an accused person or a witness, and if he did not choose to allow him to sit down, would have to stand before him and answer his questions.”

“Ivan Ilych never abused his power; he tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it and the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief interest and attraction of his office.”

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

“Know that in your deeper mind are infinite intelligence and infinite power.”

“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. ”

″‘You sent him to the sky to die, assassin,’ Kaladin said, Stormlight puffing from his lips, ‘but the sky and the winds are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your life.‘”

″‘How . . .’ Dalinar said. ‘You fell into a chasm!’ ‘I fell face-first, sir,’ Kaladin said, ‘and fortunately, I’m particularly hard-headed.‘”

“Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.”

“God without Christ is no God.”

“Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power.”

“Everyone has some darkness inside. It’s like a hungry creature. It wants and wants and wants with a terrible power.”

“What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

“The human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience, self-protection, and self-healing.”

“Learning is knowledge and knowledge is freedom and power. He knew that. He had forgotten that, somehow. But he knew it once more.”

“Our goddess of the moon is gifted with magic, with power over the dead. She could banish the dreams, if she wished. She did not.”

“No; he did not think they would suspect him of anything. He was black. Again he felt the roll of crisp bills in his pocket; if things went wrong he could always run away. He wondered how much money was in the roll; he had not even counted it. He would see when he got to Bessie’s. No; he need not be afraid. He felt the gun nestling close to his skin. That gun could always make folks stand away and think twice before bothering him.”

“So this is a pageant. A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years. I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.”

“I mean, marriage drinks up all of our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear—but it murders our marriage—and then the marriage stays with us like a murder—and everything else is gone.”

“He had a natural wall from behind which he could look at them. His crime was an anchor weighing him safely in time; it added to him a certain confidence which his gun and knife did not. He was outside his family now, over and beyond them. They were incapable of thinking that he had done such a thing. And he had done something which even he had not thought possible.”

“History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.”

“Egypt, thou knew’st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’strings And thou shouldst tow me after. ”

“Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.”

“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?”

“I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.”

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

“Dominant parties maintain power by the threat (acted upon or not) that abusive punishment, physical or psychological, will be used whenever the hierarchal structures in place are threatened, whether that be in male-female relationships, or parent and child bonds.”

“It was the exercise of my power that attracted me most.”

“No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.”

“[Pride and power] are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark.”

“Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.”

“Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th’ austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. ”

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

“If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.”

″(Christophine) is intelligent in her way and can express herself well, but I did not like the look of her at all, and consider her a most dangerous person. My wife insisted that she had gone back to Martinique her native island, and was very upset that I had mentioned the matter even in such a roundabout fashion.”

“Knowledge is the power of the mind. Wisdom is the power of the soul.”

“The moment the people is legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the government wholly lapses.”

“Tell Mary to leave me alone. I don’t want this power she’s giving me.” “She’s not giving you the power, miss. Just showing you the way.” “Well, I don’t want to follow! Do you understand, Mary Dowd?”

“Power, in Case’s world, meant corporate power. ”

“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms that strength into right.”

“The sovereign, having no force other than the legislative power, acts only by means of the laws.”

“Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.”

“They have charts that show which chords are the most thumbs-up. Music is marketing. They have lists of key changes that get thirteen-year-old girls screaming. There’s no difference between a song and an advertising jingle anymore. Songs are their own jingles.”

″ He may have hurt you, but he will never broke you. He doesn’t have that power.”

“What I’m doing, what I’ve been doing over the feed for the last two days, is trying to create a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it. I’m not going to let them catalog me. I’m going to become invisible.”

“It’s Riot Gear. It’s retro. It’s beat up to look like one of the big twentieth-century riots. It’s been big since earlier this week.”

“What power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?”

“She sits on the bed to put them on. It is like a knight shoving his hands into a pair of steel gauntlets. As she wiggles the toe for fit, she lets her eyes stray across the slag heap of old LPs.”

“You have to be firm with these people, or they start doing what they like.”

“You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly... But — you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... Ask yourselves, all of you... What power would hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?”

“He was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge. A soldier’s knowledge wasn’t supposed to be round.”

“In other words, wabi-sabi tells us to stop our preoccupation with success--wealth, status, power, and luxury--and enjoy the unencumbered life.”

“All struggles are essentially power struggles...two rams knocking their heads together.”

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others...miserable.”

″ ‘There it is—friend,’ he said to his memory of Rumfoord, ‘and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you—even too late—your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine.’ ”

“At the hospital they even had to explain to Unk that there was a radio antenna under the crown of his skull, and that it would hurt him whenever he did something a good soldier wouldn’t ever do. The antenna also would give him orders and furnish drum music to march to. They said that not just Unk but everybody had an antenna like that—doctors and nurses and four-star generals included. It was a very democratic army, they said.”

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

“Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks...”

“Zoya was awful, but she was also right. I didn’t belong in this beautiful world, and if I didn’t find a way to use my power, I never would”

“And one of the first and most startling things you find out is, that every individual you encounter in the City of Washington ... from the highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs Department halls, the night watchmen of the public buildings... represents Political Influence.”

“Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.”

“He who understands the Principle of Vibration, has grasped the scepter of power.”

“Your power serves you because that is its purpose, because it cannot help but serve you”.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

“I had a dream about you last night. I could fly. I was going to use this power to impress you, but you were too heavy to carry, so I won you over with my personality instead.”

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”

“This was the truth behind the handsome face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by frightened monsters. ”

“Somehow, of late, I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word ‘prefer’ upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce?”

“I did not depend upon the great vision as I should have done; I depended upon the two sticks that I had seen in the lesser vision. It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those shadows men get lost.”

“A general convention of the United States was proposed to be held, and deputies were accordingly appointed by twelve of the states charged with power to revise, alter, and amend the Articles of Confederation.”

“When these deputies met, instead of confining themselves to the powers with which they were entrusted, they pronounced all amendments to the Articles of Confederation wholly impracticable; and with a spirit of amity and concession truly remarkable proceeded to form a government entirely new, and totally different in its principles and its organization.”

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.”

“It is from understanding that power comes; and the power in the ceremony was in understanding what it meant; for nothing can live well except in a manner that is suited to the way the sacred Power of the World lives and moves.”

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”

“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.”

″‘You two can do whatever you like. Risa and I broke up this morning. Should I turn off the light when I leave?‘”

“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.”

“We have no longer to contemplate as our greatest potential danger, the alliance, junction, and co-operation of two naval powers of approximately equal strength, with all the weakness and uncertainty inherent in such combinations, but we have had for some time to consider the growth and development of a very powerful homogeneous Navy...”

“The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.”

“If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.”

“A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.”

“…but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the greater, not the perfect good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness, involves a discretion which may be misapplied an abused.”

“This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the [people’s] immediate representatives. ”

“In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will. ”

“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”

“The interior drama, therefore, is always the important one. The “story of your life” is written by you, by each reader of this book. You are the author. There is no reason, therefore, for you to view the drama and feel trapped by it. The power to change your own condition is your own. You have only to exercise it.”

“Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. All personalities are not physical. It is only because you are so busily concerned with daily matters that you do not realize that there is a portion of you who knows that its own powers are far superior to those shown by the ordinary self.”

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ”

“You only have power over people as 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.”

“Go back out, knock, and then I’ll let you in. That’s the protocol, follow the protocol.”

″‘And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over Europe, all over the world. Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,’ Satan said, ‘sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war in the history of the race.‘”

“The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.”

“We are now far away from the country of tortures, dotted with wheels, gibbets, gallows, pillories; we are far, too, from that dream of the reformers, less than fifty years before.”

“The need for punishment without torture was ... formulated as a cry from the heart or ... from an outraged nature.”

“Public punishment is the ceremony of immediate recoding.”

“Love as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it achieves its harmony as seldom as does love by the senses. Frustrated, it creates even greater havoc, for like all love it is a madness.”

“Visibility is a trap.”

“Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals as objects.”

“Discipline is a political anatomy of detail.”

“I doubt he himself has any idea what it’s like to be so paralyzed by fear that you feel small and insignificant. But he knows just how to arouse that fear and spread it, in people’s homes and their beds, in their heads and their hearts.”

″‘Power is all that counts,’ he taught his son. ‘Rules are made by the strongest, so be sure that you’re the one who makes them.‘”

″‘Once upon a time,’ he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”

“I pretended to be really busy reading a book but the truth is—I was watching Moose. If he looked toward me I put my nose back in the book in a hurry. Moose would be number one in my Boy Book if only I was brave enough, but what would Nancy think? She hated him.”