Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Power

Love Friendship Happiness Hope Fear Courage Death Life Time War Peace Freedom Truth Wisdom Knowledge Science Art Music Nature Money Work Power God Beauty Laughter Family Success and failure Change Dreams Books and reading

“If a person resolves to fight, he ought to know what he is fighting for. Otherwise it makes no sense. A person usually fights against a power in order to gain power himself. Or else because the power in question is threatening his life.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The particular thing about science is to combine that [the dreams of obtaining power] with a retreat from the world. Other people want to obtain power by going out into the world, but the scientist really wants to obtain power by retreating from the world.”
Max Delbrück (1906–1981) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Max Delbruck (1978), p. 88. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California.
“There are people doing yoga in New York, dancing around, that’s the power of India. You go to a nightclub somewhere in Spain and there’s Amitabh Bachchan on the screen there, dancing around. That’s the power of India. That’s the power of Indian people.”
Rahul Gandhi (born 1970) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2013. Wall Street Journal, WSJ
“The cycle of violence will continue far into the new millennium. Hopes for peace will probably not be realized, because the great that shape the international system fear each other and compete for power as a result. Indeed, their ultimate aim is to gain a position of dominant power over others, because having dominant power is the best means to ensure one's own survival.”
John Mearsheimer (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“States have two kinds of power: latent power and military power.”
John Mearsheimer (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe psychics are either kooks or they're tapping into a real power. But it is not, it's not a holy power, it's an evil power. No offense to James [Van Praagh], because I think that he has a good heart and he really believes that what he is doing is good, and perhaps you are deceived…”
Christine O'Donnell (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not the power to conquer others but the power to become one with others is the ultimate power.”
Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Civil Sphere (2006) by Jeffrey C. Alexander, p. 388
“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks at Amherst College (26 October 1963)
“When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.”
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 109: To his publisher (31 July 1947)
“To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side. As long as no violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...”
John Locke (1632–1704) said by 1704 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michel Foucault, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical 'super-power', which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Discipline 'makes' individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a triumphant power...it is a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated, but permanent economy.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[Power|[P]ower]] without limitation is directly related to madness. The man who exercises power is wise only insofar as there exists someone who can use parrhesia to criticize him, thereby putting some limit to his power, to his command.”
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m afraid of power…” Gregor’s voice went low, contemplative. “You aren’t afraid of power, you’re afraid of hurting people. If you wield that power,” Miles deduced suddenly. “Huh. Close guess.” “Not dead-on?” “I’m afraid I might enjoy it. The hurting.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry — love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously. It has nothing to do with their being women. It has to do with their cheap paths to power. Kevin Federline isn't taken seriously either.”
Ann Coulter (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For already the myth is being carefully built up. Hitler is to be the Messiah of organic evolution—the anti-Christ of the will to power, which is not a will to national power but a will to power per se, the liberation of the lustfully destructive from any inhibitions whatsoever.”
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 358, "The Revolution of Nihilism" May 8, 1939)
“The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.”
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can never substitute emotion for reason. I still would allow a place for intuition in this process, but not emotion. They say I am a power gabber. But knowledge is power, and I am giving them knowledge, so they will have more power. Can't they see that?”
Robert McNamara (1916–2009) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Henry L. Trewhitt (1971) McNamara, p. 119
“In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Violence (1970)
“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.”
David Brin (born 1950) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Values of the Wise: Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 120
“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994).
“Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer, but it does make the state stronger—and it does increase the power of officials and politicians, power more menacing, more permanent and less useful than market power within the rule of law. Inequality of income can only be eliminated at the cost of freedom. The pursuit of income equality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum.”
Keith Joseph (1918–1994) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stranded on the Middle Ground? Reflections on Circumstances and Policies (Centre for Policy Studies, 1976)
“I judge property myself by its net earning power; that is the only rule I have been able to get.… This whole island [Manhattan] was once bought for a few strings of beads. But now you will find this property valued by its earning power, by its rent power, and that is the way to value a railroad or telegraph.”
Jay Gould (1836–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now the power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.”
R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Prose (1995), p. 131
“Real power is the ability to imagine something better, something different and act to bring that vision to life. That’s what I want for all people. Not that we crave weak power. But that we ARE power. By our actions and our choices we re-make the world in such a way that Life and Nature are sacred once again.”
Heather Brooke (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power.”
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because knowledge is power, every hegemonic power challenged by “another knowledge” must try to stay in the center of knowledge. However, not every power is the right center for every knowledge. Reflective knowledge cannot be separated from its subject.”
Peter Sloterdijk (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power is shared, principally between the President and this body, this Congress, both houses. In fact, this herky-jerkiness, the two houses, the war power divided between the President and Congress, this unwieldy structure is the whole idea. No one has or should ever have all the power.”
Angus King (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power is based on the control of communication and information, be it the macro-power of the state and media corporations or the micro-power of organizations of all sorts.”
Manuel Castells (born 1942) first seen 1475 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 1475
“Power conversion is the capacity to convert potential power, as measured by resources, to realized power, as measured by the changed behavior of others.”
Joseph Nye (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capitalist mode acts to accumulate capital through the hiring of labor power, but is marked by the cyclical alternation of labor mobilization and labor displacement; each intake of labor power uproots some prior adaptation, while each sloughing off of labor power creates a new cohort of the unemployed.”
Eric Wolf (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego.”
Brené Brown (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under slavery, power lay in the hands of the slavemasters: under colonialism, power lay in the hands of the colonialists. The loss of power for the various African states meant a reduction in the freedom of every individual.”
Walter Rodney (1942–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy is a form of leading state in which the right and power in the hands of the people as a permanent. To ensure that the right and power is in the hands of people permanently, it must have a system to ensure the balance of power between citizens with its representatives.”
Khem Veasna (born 1965) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Multi-Parties political platform (25 June 2013)
“Any power-over position forwards a culture that oppresses the transgendered. We should look for positions that allow us to bring out the power we have within us, and to acknowledge the power of others.”
Kate Bornstein (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can confer authority; but power or capacity, no man can give or take. The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workmen, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power”
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Follett in: Pauline Graham (2003), Mary Parker Follett--prophet of Management, p. 115
“The holy spirit means the invisible power of Jehovah, holy because he is holy. This power of Jehovah operated upon the minds of honest men who loved and who were devoted to righteousness, directing them in the writing of the Bible. The spirit of God, i. e., his invisible power, moved upon the waters and thereby he created.”
Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Harp of God (1921)
“...there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”
Alan Paton (1903–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shouldn’t be naive” Diana said. “Of course, realising its destructive power only makes them want it more. Of course. Even more than great wealth, power craves technologies of destruction. Good to be wealthy, but better to remain in power—and the more awe-inspiring the weaponry at your disposal, the better able you are to do that.”
Adam Roberts (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a commonly held misconception that elected politicians hold any significant power in the current Western system of government. At best they represent figureheads around which power coalesces, and you can follow the power by following the name, as if it were a small and dusty bobber attached to a large and energetic fish.”
Curtis Yarvin (born 1973) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Democrats: party of lies", Unqualified Reservations (May 29, 2007).
“These Peerless thump their chests in salute to me. The monsters. They go with the wind, chasing power. But they don't realize power doesn't shift. Power is resolute. It is the mountain, not the wind. To shift so easily is to lose trust. And trust is what has kept me alive. Trust in my friends, and their trust in me.”
Pierce Brown (born 1988) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source