c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Of course, it was impossible, in this company, not to think about balances of power. Raffin and Bann glanced at each other now and then, sharing silent agreement, teasing each other, or just resting their eyes on each other, as if each man was a comfortable resting place for the other. Prince Raffin, heir to the Middluns throne; Bann, who had no title, no fortune. How she longed to ask them questions that were too nosy for asking, even by her standards. How did they balance money matters? How did they make decisions? How did Bann cope with the expectation that Raffin marry and produce heirs? If Randa knew the truth about his son, would Bann be in danger? Did Bann ever resent Raffin’s wealth and importance? What was the balance of power in their bed?
— Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue
The power behind words lies with the person.
— Renee Ahdieh, The Rose & the Dagger
I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.
— Whitney Young
Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant(Isabella)
— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Stand up for who you are. Respect your Self and ignite the divine sparks in you. Access your powers. Choose your rights and work together with others to bring blessings into the lives.
— Amit Ray
People with power always take advantage of those without power.
— Christopher Pike, The Last Vampire
If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately in the world then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel know and value deeply.
— Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.
— Kahlil Gibran
I know that love is about power, too. Who gives, who takes. Who is willing to risk showing their true self.
— Alison Goodman, Eona: The Last Dragoneye
You have more power than you think. Be careful what you do with it.
— Paula Stokes, This is How it Happened
The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
For to be wise and love exceeds man's might.
— William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
But everyone has some kind of power to hurt people.
— Kristin Cashore, Graceling
If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
You may be a lady but you are still the man!
— Lynda Barry, The Lynda Barry Experience
Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.
— Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Harness the power of today. Seize the blessings of today! Make something happen, enhance your life, make someone laugh, help a friend, love, love, love!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.
— Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations
— Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Red blood is just so hard to clean up" "You would know" I snap remembering Shade. "Because no matter how hard you try to hid it I see it all over your hands
— Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen
And Gandalf said: "This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what must be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the time comes of the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.
— Rita Mae Brown
All power is the same. Magic. Physical strength. Economic strength. Political strength. It all serves a single purpose-it gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It creates alternative courses of action. 
— Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.
— Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You
He was demanding. He always would be. But sometimes, he was so vulnerable and she realized she had power in the relationship as well. She hadn’t expected that. He was as vulnerable to her as she was to him. He just acted arrogant and bossy, but deep down, where it counted, he didn’t want to lose her either.
— Christine Feehan, Safe Harbor
Sometimes the words people don't say are as powerful as the ones they do.
— Ann E. Burg, All the Broken Pieces
My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.
— Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
With great power often comes great confusion.
— Dan Allen, Seam in Action
I don’t want to be your snack, your chew-toy, your fuck-buddy. Find a vampire to sink your fang into.
— Nalini Singh, Angels' Blood
Do not seek power for revenge. Seek power in order to avoid situations that would make you want revenge.
— Salla Simukka, As Red as Blood
Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.
— Stephen King, The Dark Tower
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.
— Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table
I value my ownindependence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than thatof having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturingme, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He mightbe the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel andresent his interference...
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!
— Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
But… all I said was that I was scared." After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind." She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons." You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later." She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power." I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…" Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time—
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica
It is the curse of the powerful to be blind to their own faults.
— Robert Fanney
Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII
No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
— Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code; For the Use All Nations and All Governments Professing Liberal Opinions Volume 1
Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.
— Martha Grimes, Dust
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.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do... 
— Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
It's wonderful to feel desired. There's a sense of power in it, really.
— Nancy Horan, Loving Frank
The love of liberty is the love of others
—  the love of power is the love of ourselves.(1778 - 1830)
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. From its ether of manifestation that is garlanded in perpetual darkness, it not only influences and seeks the ruination and destruction of everything that resides in our universe, but rushes to embrace its own oblivion as well.To accomplish this, however, it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain. For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate. This then becomes the condition of evil’s existence: the baneful ideologies of those who wantonly chose to ignore the needs and rights of others, inducing oppression, fear, pain, and even death throughout the cosmos. And by these means, evil seeks to supplant the balance of the universe with its perverse nature. And once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself. And within that terrible instant of unimaginable exploding quantum fury, it will burn brighter than a trillion galaxies to herald its moment of ultimate triumph. But a moment is all that it shall be. And a micro-second later when the last amber burns and flickers out to the demise of dissolving ash, evil will leave its legacy of a totally devoid universe as its everlasting monument to eternal death.
— R.G. Risch, Beyond Mars: Crimson Fleet
And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped...
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.
— Robert   Harris, Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.
— Guillermo del Toro, The Fall
In this lifetime we are like Superman who must remain disguised as the nerdy newspaper journalist Clark Kent, or Harry Potter and his friends who are not allowed to do magic while they are on holiday, away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... but even Harry Potter and Clark Kent get to tap into their ‘special powers’ once in a while, especially when the going gets tough.
— Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny
Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.
— Sheila Jeffreys, Unpacking Queer Politics
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
— Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power
The first step toward power is to accept reality
— Shannon McKenna, Behind Closed Doors
She was kahuna, creating more life around her than was actually there, heightening the momentousness of each living thing by simply gazing upon it.
— Kiana Davenport, Shark Dialogues
My power grew angry that it was confined to my petite frame and pulled against my taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through my skin to lay flat against my outer edge. The glowing energy began to solidify against my flesh; it lengthened to mold itself to my frame and contained me in a transparent cocoon. I flexed my fingers against the waxy surface and began to panic. I was cut off from my coven now and could not feel their thoughts. I could see the panic on their faces as I fell onto my side to convulse.
— J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness
I'm such a strong human being. I amaze myself even. If only you knew what I've been up against, you'd want my autograph. I'm a real life superhero.
— Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading
As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.
— Boris Pasternak
By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good.
— James George Frazer, The Golden Bough
By the power of Steven Wright's Beard!
— Craig Ferguson
Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
There is no place so dangerous as a world without magic.
— Terry Goodkind, Soul of the Fire
Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents the strongest possible threat. The feelings of admiration and of ecstasy induced by them thus mean that we are concerned to admire them from afar. The sun corresponds to that prudent concern. It is all radiance gigantic loss of heat and light, flame, explosion; but remote from men, who can enjoy in safety and quiet the fruits of this cataclysm. To earth belongs the solidity which sustains houses of stone and the steps of men (at least on its surface, for buried within the depths of the earth is the incandescence of lava).
— Georges Bataille, Van Gogh As Prometheus
She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.
— Max Barry, Lexicon
THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity.
— Christopher Hitchens, Arguably: Selected Essays
What if one out of every three multinational corporation CEO's were raped every year? Don't you think that would raise a kind of ruckus?
— Inga Muscio, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
There is a special place in hell for women that will not help one another.
— Rae Mariz, The Unidentified
He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The decide word is so powerful. It's amazing what you can do once you decide to do it.
— Lorii Myers, Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success
Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop.
— Caroline Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
— Frank Herbert
Kelsier smiled. 'It means that you, Vin, are a very special person. You have a power that most high noblemen envy. It is a power that, had you been born an aristocrat, would have made you one of the most deadly and influential people in all of the final empire.'Kelsier leaned forward again. 'But, you weren't born an aristocrat. You're not noble, Vin. You don't have to play by their rules--and that makes you even more powerful.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
— Tacitus
If power is the only important thing, then Frodo loses against Sauron. Hell, if power’s the only important thing then Gandalf loses against Sauron. If magic is the deciding factor of a fight, then four plucky kids from England get their asses turned to stone by the White Which.
— Patrick Rothfuss
Character is power.
— Booker T. Washington
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —And thus we half-men struggle.
— Robert Browning, Robert Browning's Poetry
Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Incubus Dreams
And what exactly do you think this proves?" he spits. "You've got power, but you don't know what to do wit
— Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer
How can the strength of one man stand against Jake and an army of demons?""He can," I countered, "if he has the power of Heaven on his side. After all, Christ was a man.""He was also the Son of God, there's a difference.""Do you think they could have crucified him if he wasn't human?" I asked. "He was flesh and blood, just like Xavier. You've been here so long you underestimate the power of humans. They're a force of nature.
— Alexandra Adornetto, Hades
The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
My son used to believe that he could look at a plane in flight and make it explode in midair by simply thinking it. He believed, at thirteen, that the border between himself and the world was thin and porous enough to allow him to affect the course of events. An aircraft in flight was a provocation too strong to ignore. He’d watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he’d sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people. He was sensitive to the most incidental stimulus and he thought he could feel the object itself yearning to burst. All he had to do was wish the fiery image into his mind and the plane would ignite and shatter. His sister used to tell him, Go ahead, blow it up, let me see you take that plane out of the sky with all two hundred people aboard, and it scared him to hear someone talk this way and it scared her too because she wasn’t completely convinced he could not do it. It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent. But Jeff got older and lost interest and conviction. He lost the paradoxical gift for being separate and alone and yet intimately connected, mind-wired to distant things.
— Don DeLillo, Underworld
Calmness is the cradle of power.
— J.G. Holland
To be able to shit on people before they get a chance to shit on you. That's power.
— Sister Souljah, The Coldest Winter Ever
Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles
—  but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power
When you have no real power, go public -- really public. The public is where the real power is.
— Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance
I hate what you represent."... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.
— Jim Butcher
The pow'r I have on you is to spare you / The malice towards you, to forgive you. Posthumus
— William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
I recreate myself
—  that is my only power.
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
— John le Carré
The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man
— José Ortega y Gasset
Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.
— Derrick A. Bell, Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth
Do I look like I want to be eaten alive after sex?
— Nalini Singh, Archangel's Kiss
All empires fall, eventually.” “But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.[”]
— Max Barry, Lexicon
If you never have sex you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel.And if you never have sex, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.
— Noah Webster
The older a wizard grows, the more silent he becomes, like a woody vine growing over time to choke a garden path, deep and full of moss and snakes, running everywhere, impenetrable.
— F.T. McKinstry, Crowharrow
To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame
— Alfred de Vigny, Stello
Magic is dangerous: it's neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it can be both a blessing and a curse. It takes strength, the strength of a man, to make the magic his own, to make it serve him, and not the other way around.
— Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam
I keep what I know about Sarah Lynn and Lawrence to myself. I also remind myself that even if Sarah Lynn does have a scary strict father, that doesn't release her from the responsibility of treating others with respect. Abuse of power is wrong, no matter the context, no matter the history.What is "power" anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.
— Lauren Myracle, Bliss
Taking power away from a man is a dangerous thing. Someone always pays.
— Glenn Close
Apathy's just a front. People offer it when there's something stronger hiding underneath. You have to work harder to tap into it, but then your performance has even more power.
— Guy Mankowski, How I Left the National Grid: A post-punk novel
To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
— Kevin Alfred Strom
A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
— Georges Clémenceau
One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.
— Winona LaDuke
Anger can be managed to becomeemotional content that raises power.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Power lacks moral or principles. It only has interests.
— Horacio Castellanos Moya
We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.
— Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power
If you can abuse your power you have too much.
— Marty Rubin
Power is the near neighbour of necessity.
— Pythagoras
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
— Harry Shearer
After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.
— John F. Kennedy, Prelude to Leadership: The Post-War Diary, Summer 1945
I think the most powerful thing a woman can have is confidence.
— Rowan Blanchard
Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. "That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.
— Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles
A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.
— Agnes Repplier
In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)
— Saul Bellow, Herzog
You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. "yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.
— Frank Beddor, ArchEnemy
You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.
— David Baldacci, Absolute Power
And power without compassion is the worst kind of evil there is.
— E.J. Patten, Return to Exile
If I had a nickel for every time I'd wished I possessed the power to alter another person's mind, I'd be knee deep in nickels.
— Mayandree Michel, Betrayal
The fairy tale belongs to the poor...I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.
— Erik Christian Haugaard
Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face t
— Jared Diamond
Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
They were way more interested in learning the alphabet or whatever than they were in learning how to rip a moose in half with their bare hands. Then make a helmet out of its skull. Then to use that helmet to help kill more moose. Collect the skull helmets. Combine. Assemble. Super moose skull helmet. Infinite power.
— Bratniss Everclean, The Hunger But Mainly Death Games: A Parody
Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
— Charles Caleb Colton
Don't make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must
— Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go
When he is most powerful, nothing does he become.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sign and Its Children
The absolutely awesome incredible power of belief is the genie in your life.
— Eldon Taylor
In the beginning, the taste of power is sweet, savored on the tongue, like fine wine. It whispers promises in your ear and pretends to be your friend. It is easy to become addicted to this feeling.
— Rahma Krambo, Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria
The world is a much more beautiful and incredible place than you think, and each of us has a great deal of power to make it more so.
— Oie Osterkamp
Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear.
— Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
— Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.
— Junot Díaz
Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.
— John Christopher, The Prince in Waiting
But isn't it likely that everyone in this world...has killed someone or other on their way to the top?...All I wanted was a chance to be a man--and for that, one murder is enough.
— Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Power changes its appearance but not its reality.
— Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power
The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
— Toni Morrison
Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.
— Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power
Mage-taught wisdom reproached him: any gift of power was two-edged.
— Janny Wurts, The Curse of the Mistwraith
When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.
— Brian Ruckley, Bloodheir
Believers infiltrate the enemy’s territory with knowledge and power.
— Sherry K. White
Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding. -Hestia
— Rick Riordan
Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.
— Karen Maitland, Company of Liars
But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.
— Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.
— Abraham Lincoln
One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.
— Jean Genet, The Balcony
... the forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run.
— Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place
Only when you are dangerous are you truly equal to the world.
— Daniel Hecht, Bones of the Barbary Coast
democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one’s self.
— Sheldon S. Wolin
I had cooperated. I could not have refused. I was smitten with her, half in love but also afraid, because in my life (and she seemed to know this) I had not loved anyone without having been wounded. Love was power and possession, love caused pain: you were never more exposed than when you were in love, never more wounded; possession was an enslavement, something stifling.
— Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta
Who ought to be the king of france-the person who has the title, or the man who has the power?
— Pepin the Short
Power surged through him: unfettered power, unimaginable power. It coursed through him and gave life to his maddened cry, feeding it, making it unnecesssary even to breathe. Deeper and deeper his screm became, until it was the primal voice of the very land itself. It was raw, searing. It was the energy of making and undoing, and he had unleashed it.
— Derek Donais, MetalMagic: Talisman
Pretense cannot sustain blind power.
— Dejan Stojanovic
Crystal then read the red sticker out loud, "Dangerous, do not open." We both stared at each other for a moment. I was trying to figure out why a dumb book about power was dangerous
— Dominic Tomasi
Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.
— James Richardson
Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.
— Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
A lion may die of an ass's kick.
— Robert Browning, Robert Browning's Poetry
New concepts should be introduced by the power of imagery.
— Douglas Coop
You've got some power," Jakkin said. "One hug—and the lights go out!
— Jane Yolen, A Sending of Dragons
Writers are in many ways like demi-gods. With one stroke of a pen they can give life to a character, or strike them from existence, with nary a twinge of grief at their passing.
— Steven Lake
One is always a good master when one isn’t the master
— Alfred de Vigny, Stello
The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.
— Ben Elton, Blast from the Past
A waitress, bringing Finkler more hot water, interrupted Treslove's answer. Finkler always asked for more hot water no matter how much hot water had already been brought. It was his way of asserting power, Treslove thought. No doubt Nietzsche, too, ordered more hot water than he needed.
— Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back.
— Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
[P]ower is at its most potent when it can operate silently.
— J.A. Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social History 1550 1760
If you make peace without defense power,then you should be really ready to be ruled.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others
— Jocelyn  Murray, The English Pirate
Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.
— Cheryl Hersha, Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed To Kill For Their Country
He can switch from one view to another with frightening ease. I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
Don't underestimate the power of a mind that is made up.
— Miya Yamanouchi, Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women