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Power
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“I think, here is your emblem To hang in the future sky; Not the cross, not the hive, But this; bright power, dark peace; Fierce consciousness joined with final Disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon’s Realist eyes and act Married to the massive Mysticism of stone, Which failure cannot cast down Nor success make proud.”
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rock and Hawk" in Solstice and Other Poems (1935)
“It is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.”
Sydney Smith (1771–1845) first seen 1808 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
Recorded in: Female Education" (review of Thomas Broadhurst, Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of Mind, 1808), in The Edinburgh Review, No. 30 (January 1810), p. 314
“All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard in the sanctuary; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His mysteries.”
Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696) said by 1696 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All men now allow that if any human power could have stemmed the avalanche of the French Revolution, it would have been the reforms of Turgot.”
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Master was allergic to ideologies. "In a war of ideas," he said, "it is people who are the casualties." Later he elaborated: "People kill for money or for power. But the most ruthless murderers are those who kill for their ideas.”
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.”
Jane Addams (1860–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“Power can win the body count but it cannot win this war. Because the enemy is not human. This is a war against a malicious spirit. Only fools attempt to defeat a spirit with guns and rockets and bombs.”
Gerry Spence (1929–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Especially in its opening scenes, Ballast is "slower" and "quieter" than we usually expect. You know what? So is life, most of the time. We don't wake up and immediately start engaging with plot points. But Ballast inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us. I always say I hardly ever cry at sad films, but I sometimes do, just a little, at films about good people.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Ballast (29 October 2008)
“I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Angels in the Outfield (15 July 1994)
“People often say that violence accomplishes nothing, that it's ineffective. Violence is dreadfully effective. That's why those in power use it.”
Derrick Jensen (born 1960) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in The Pied Pipers of Pacifism: Lee Hall, Gary Francione, and the Betrayal of Animal Liberation by Steven Best and Jason Miller (2009). p. 12.
“From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with--and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with--the perceived entitlement.”
Derrick Jensen (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning. I think I've learned that lesson twice now. The essence of successful revolution, be it for an individual, a community of individuals, or a nation, depends on accepting that challenge.”
Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remembering Jane’s accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor in judging Tull. But it was bitter knowledge that made him see the truth. He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had watched till he saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to a man’s hate, to the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a Bishop, to the long, far-reaching arm of a terrible creed.”
Zane Grey (1872–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“For hand in glove with that power was an insatiate greed; they were one and the same.”
Zane Grey (1872–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“...a great architect's creative power, his capacity to make something beautiful, lies in his capacity to observe correctly, and deeply. A painter's talent lies in his capacity to see – he sees more acutely, more precisely, what it is that really matters in a thing, and where its qualities come from.”
Christopher Alexander (1936–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've chosen not to challenge the rule of law, because in our system there really is no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution. When the Supreme Court makes a decision, no matter how strongly one disagrees with it, one faces a choice — are we, in John Adams' phrase, a nation of laws, or is it a contest made on raw power?”
Al Gore (born 1948) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Gore Sees No Reason to Run" by Patrick Healy in The New York Times (25 May 2007).
“One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded.”
“Any new dominant communications medium leads to a new information ecology in society that inevitably changes the way ideas, feelings, wealth, power and influence are distributed and the way collective decisions are made.”
“It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind, enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state. Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one gradually recalls them in the waking state.”
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama (born 1935) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with The Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism (1999)
“We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society...We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Brighton (6 October 1971)
“We are socialists because we believe that these rights cannot be fully realised in any society under capitalism, which, as in Britain now, has entrenched by law, the power of Capital over Labour, and subordinated human values to the demand for profit, at the expense of social justice and peace.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpt from a draft socialist manifesto Benn submitted to the Labour National Executive Committee in 1987. The rights Benn was referring to were one he laid out in the draft manifesto he submitted, such as the “right t…
“People at the top do not want to share their power. They’ve always got some marvellous reason: I’m following my religion; I’m following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I’m representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don’t cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn’t be pessimistic about it...”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” (January 2003)
“I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
“The key to any progress is to ask the question why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it, to accept what goes on. Without questions we won't make any progress at all.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Creating Freedom (2013).
“The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I had the strength, I did not have the patience. I have the patience today and I no longer have the power.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People have the power To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It's decreed the people rule.”
Patti Smith (born 1946) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: People Have the Power, from Dream of Life (1988)
“How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Renaissance Italy became a kind of Hollywood collection of sets of antiquity, and the new visual antiquarianism of the Renaissance provided an avenue to power for men of any class. (p. 136)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every technology contrived and “outered” by man has the power to numb human awareness during the period of its first interiorization. (p. 174)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords. (p. 302).”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The tribalizing power of the new electronic media, the way in which they return to us to the unified fields of the old oral cultures, to tribal cohesion and pre-individualist patterns of thought, is little understood. Tribalism is the sense of the deep bond of family, the closed society as the norm of community.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tyuonyi, Volumes 1-2, 1985, p. 60
“We now live in a technologically prepared environment that blankets the earth itself. The humanly contrived environment of electric information and power has begun to take precedence over the old environment of "nature." Nature, as it were, begins to be the content of our technology.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'We believe in Allah, we take the Koran as a sacred book. In our land we broke the power of infidel Rum, in his own land we struck down her Sultan whom men called the Pope, in Malta we slew the Knights, sworn enemies of Islam. Inform your people that we are sent by Allah to geld the evil Turk and raise high the people of the Nile.'”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An Egyptian priest....plays up the mystery of language to enhance his own power.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[H]ighly ambitious work...continuing power....vast novel...told over eighty-one chapters by an eighty-one-year-old pederast Catholic writer-narrator...summed up the literary, social and moral history of the century with comic richness as well as encyclopedic knowingness.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel, 1993
“Nothing, perhaps, would more surprise the English people than if the Queen by a coup d’état and on a sudden destroyed a ministry firm in the allegiance and secure of a majority in Parliament. That power, indisputably, in theory, belongs to her; but it has passed so far away from the minds of men that it would terrify them, if she used it, like a volcanic eruption from Primrose Hill.”
Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) said by 1877 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle. [It] has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.”
John Cheever (1912–1982) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Accepting National Medal for Literature (April 27, 1982).
“What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.”
John Cheever (1912–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).
“But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.”
Richard Bach (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.”
Richard Bach (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge) Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left.”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source Put this on something
“The principles of Western liberalism seem no longer to lend themselves to effective action. Deprived of the expressive power, we are awed by it, have a hunger for it, and are afraid of it. Thus we praise the gray dignity of our soft-spoken leaders, but in our hearts we are suckers for passionate outbursts, even when those passionate outbursts are hypocritical and falsely motivated.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Literary Notes on Khrushchev" (1961), p. 36
“The day of imperial power is over. We are ashamed of our imperial past in Great Britain, and you have a lot to be ashamed of, too.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Tokyo, Japan (3 September 1954), quoted in The Times (4 September 1954), p. 5
“I do not take the view that Great Britain is a second-class Power. On the contrary, I take the view that this country is a depository of probably more concentrated experience and skill than any other country in the world.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (19 December 1956)
“The function of parliamentary democracy, under universal franchise, historically considered, is to expose wealth-privilege to the attack of the people. It is a sword pointed at the heart of property-power. The arena where the issues are joined is Parliament.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conversion of an industry to public ownership is only the first step towards Socialism. It is an all-important step, for without it the conditions of further progress are not established. One important consequence is a shift of power that resolves the conflict between public and private claims. The danger of the State machine being manipulated by private vested interests is thus reduced.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source