c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Handling power is very much like handling explosives, you have to have a great deal of respect for it and most people don't.
— R.A.Delmonico
It had been horrible, yes, and he'd never want to do it again - but it truly was his most powerful experience.
— Shane Stadler
In the past imagination and enjoyment were the religions. What is religion? It is the evolution of life power. What a man is wanting to know? He always wants to know the infinite power latent in his body. See what an immense power this human body holds!
— Sri Jibankrishna or Diamond
The masses have yet to realize that generating your own electricity is a potentially hazardous activity to engage in.
— Steven Magee
The USA utility power generation industry subcontracts out their dangerous jobs so that the bad statisitics will not be associated with them. Smart people avoid working for the subcontractors. I have worked directly for a number of subcontractors and overseen subcontractors and their staff were clearly sick, showing behavioral problems and overworked. In some cases they were blatantly breaking OSHA laws. OSHA covers it all up! Unfortunately, the problems can be traced back to OSHA and their wilful lack of enforcement of the law.
— Steven Magee
It is hard to write it in words that I can read, that re-establishes the fact that has been haunting me for the past one year.
— Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary, Laiza- Sometimes the end is only a Beginning
Authenticity is not just the key to a long-lasting career
—  it is the key to developing real power.
It's always a risk. Wherever there is great emotion. because there is power in that. And few people handle power well.
— Morgan Matson, The Unexpected Everything
Life is like a little book written With a whole lot of surprise.Spell a word that doesn´t fit inAnd that´s a spell in desguise.
— Ana Claudia Antunes, The Witches Of Avignon
Even though she was powerful enough to kill, she could also grow flowers.
— Becky Allen, Bound by Blood and Sand
Dex crouched down next to her, lips level with her ear. "You know, you were a lot more fun three years ago."It was like he wanted her to kill him.She turned, unfazed that their faces were separated by mere centimeters. So close she could see the pores in his caramel skin, the deep brown of his eyes, and the raised scar that rested near his temple.She'd given him that scar.What she also noticed was how her heart no longer fluttered like it used to when he looked at her. She used to love his eyes, their unspoken words. The feel of his skin against hers during their passionate nights, but now those thoughts made her cringe. She guarded herself against those details scrounged from distant memories. They were no longer part of a blissful reality but a hurtful past."A lot has changed in three years, Dextro," Andi said calmly. "Now if you don't move, I'll give you a new scar, and this time," she said, pointing to his right temple, "it will be across your neck."He put his arms up in defense before rising, distancing himself from her.
— Sasha Alsberg, Zenith Part 1
What man would have courage enough to believe he could win you? Bosque laughed. "You exude power. Men are small creatures, easily cowed by those who challenge their sense of self-importance.
— Andrea Cremer, Rise
The funny thing about power is that no matter what you think it is, or how much you think you have, it's the people above and all around you who get the final say.
— M.L. Wang, Theonite: Planet Adyn
They have influence, but no power." "In my experience, influence is power.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
I have never been able to understand how men can feel affection for individuals who are intent on massacring them in a variety of unpleasant ways, but it is an undeniable fact that they can and do. Witness the immortal verse of Mr. Kipling: "So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'home in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man!" One can only accept this as another example of the peculiar emotional aberrations of the male sex.
— Elizabeth Peters, The Last Camel Died at Noon
As he passed Alistair to depart the library, Bosque said, "I'm pleased you didn't limit your vision. Ambition is the fertile soil in which true power can be cultivated.
— Andrea Cremer, Rise
And when we have power- when you have power, Jae, you'll need to decide what to do with it. What kind of person you want to be. If you want to be like them.
— Becky Allen, Bound by Blood and Sand
Sadly enough, some people are insecure in such a way that they cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than themselves. It makes them feel insignificant. But I know if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to the point that which it, perhaps, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my sheer humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my original Creator.
— Criss Jami
I make you see things that aren't really there and you believe every word
— Genesis Quihuis
How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.
— Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea
Lada had a sense for power--the fine threads that connected everyone around her, the way those threads could be pulled, tightened, wrapped around someone until they cut off the blood supply.Or snapped entirely.
— Kiersten White, And I Darken
The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did ’em.
— Joe Hill, The Fireman
Let your heart sing from those wounded places.When you sing your song with everything you've got,it will not only heal you, but it will heal all of us through you.
— Gemma B. Benton, Then She Sang A Willow Song: Reclaiming Life and Power with the Ancestors
That surge of power and delight, of confidence, of control. That sudden sense of the richness of the world. Its infinite possibility.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Under his feet he felt the hillroots going down and down into the dark, and over his head he saw the dry, far fires of the stars. Between, all things were his to order, to command. He stood at the center of the world.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Everything you see before you is the result of poverty. But how are things any better in the wealthy countries? They protect their own environments, but then shift the heavily polluting industries to the poorer nations.
— Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem
I’ve come to believe that the function of torture in our society is not about getting information, in spite of what we might want to believe. It is merely about power. It tells the world that there is now no limit to what we will do when we feel threatened.
— Nick Flynn, The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir
What the famous big blue Boy Scout told to a green Kryptonite? What?? YOU rock!
— Ana Claudia Antunes, ONE HUNDRED ONE WORLD ACCOUNTS in ONE HUNDRED ONE WORD COUNT
Expressing our feelings out loud, especially to someone else, can bring a sense of relief. There is power in proclamation.
— Michael Thomas Sunnarborg, The White Box Club Handbook: Simple Tools For Career Transition
She thinks of her mother, sitting cross-legged, sewing marigolds into garlands for the gods, telling her: "The biggest mistake we make is thinking we are powerless
— Isha Karki
Power engenders the evil-minded who ill-treat the needy in all parts of the world.
— Sylvia Iparraguirre, Tierra del Fuego
[W]e would do better to treat terrorists as common criminals, people who have broken the laws recognized by all civil societies. To treat them as soldiers is to increase their power, respectability, and commitment.
— Nel Noddings, Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War
The power to heal is all in the hug.
— Lynda Cheldelin Fell
Each of you are a voice. Together we are a choir, a powerful choir of change that circles the globe with love.
— Lynda Cheldelin Fell
The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become what he is, an individual. From becoming an individual no one, no one at all, is excluded, except he who excludes himself by becoming a crowd. To become a crowd, to collect a crowd about one, is on the contrary to affirm the distinctions of human life. The most well-meaning person who talks about these distinctions can easily offend an individual. But then it is not the crowd which possesses power, influence, repute, and mastery over men, but it is the invidious distinctions of human life which despotically ignore the single individual as the weak and impotent, which in a temporal and worldly interest ignore the eternal truth- the single individual.
— Søren Kierkegaard
God has the Power to make it happen. You have the Authority to make it happen. So stop complaining, get up, & manifest your destiny.
— Tony Warrick
There’s no matter here you can’t re-matter into love.
— Laurie Perez, The Look of Amie Martine
[T]he world we live in is governed by the most revolting bunch of crooks ever to defile the soil of this planet... [You] must never take them seriously, which is exactly what they want.
— Albert Cossery, The Jokers
I have realized that the world and its people will never be perfect; and thus, I have grown wiser. I have learned that every aspect of life owns an injustice. I have seen that every human soul is laudable. Thus, you have the power to be enlightened.
— Kylee Carrier
To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: "For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease." In chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man.
— Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby-Dick?
God, what would someone so afraid do with power so awful?
— Apollo Blake, Shadows of Ourselves
There is power in a King's blood.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something . . . because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.
— Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
Love has the power to create an inviting space in the lives of people. But if daily routine kills dreamy or passionate thoughts, the constraint of the room may become oppressive and the emptiness unbearable. The room loses then its original fullness and turns into a place of nothingness. ( " Another empty room" )
— Erik Pevernagie
A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The Establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.
— Owen   Jones, The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It
Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann’s phrase, to be ‘organisationally outflanked
— Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology
In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power.
— Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
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, The Postman
Facing your fears robs them of their power.
— Mark Burnett
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.
— Katherine Graham
Leopold, like most men of power and prestige, was not so much interested in listening to what others had to say as he was in having an audience.
— Jeremy Robinson
Why would a god sacrifice her life if she was God? Just show real power and send an army of angels and there'd be no debate.
— Peter Tieryas, United States of Japan
We must find within us a happiness with ourselves which no one else can disturb. Otherwise we give them power over us.
— Aleksandra Layland, Bind Not the Heart: A Windflower Saga Novella
The power of belief gives legitimacy to whatever may be necessary.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
Where God is like the sun, the Devil is like a raindrop. There is no 'God vs. Satan' because they aren't even that close in power and authority. The former is very patient; the latter is at mercy.
— Criss Jami
Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything.
— James          Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner
In a healthy relationship, vulnerability is wonderful. It leads to increased intimacy and closer bonds. When a healthy person realizes that he or she hurt you, they feel remorse and they make amends. It’s safe to be honest. In an abusive system, vulnerability is dangerous. It’s considered a weakness, which acts as an invitation for more mistreatment. Abusive people feel a surge of power when they discover a weakness. They exploit it, using it to gain more power. Crying or complaining confirms that they’ve poked you in the right spot.
— Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
Some of us believe that God is almighty, and can do everything; and that he is all wise, and may do everything; but that he is all love, and will do everything— there we draw back.
— Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
A woman should always know her place, and it's exactly wherever she wants to be.
— Kierra C.T. Banks
Being idolized and being torn down felt oddly similar. They both made me feel alone.Friendship and trust should be earned, and when you're famous, people seem to want to give them to you whether you've earned them or not, and it felt dishonest to me. Fame was not real. It was all a projection—fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon. Fame and power do not change us, they amplify us.
— Jewel, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story
Why don't people with money and power realize that when they screw around with the little guy when they don't have to—especially when it's a little guy like me with not a damn thing to lose—sometimes the little guy is just going to get pissed off and stubborn up?
— James          Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner
Some people," Aunt Emily answered sharply, "are so busy seeing all sides of every issue that they neutralize concern and prevent necessary action. There's no strength in seeing all sides unless you can act where real measurable injustice exists. A lot of academic talk just immobilizes the oppressed and maintains oppressors in their positions of power.
— Joy Kogawa, Obasan
Power is the gem of necessity. Without observing power, identity remains undiscovered.
— Lionel Suggs
From those to whom privilege and opportunity are given, we have the right to expect much.
— John Vasconcellos
Deceit is a tool of statecraft," Irulan agreed."There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover," Paul said.
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, out of the nothing came the Word and the Word was power. Every utterance of the Word gave form to the Void, starting with beings to utter the Word. There was no Adam, no Eve, and no need. What Man named was.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Flies to Wanton Boys
In a world where we seem to be beset by a trend towards 'manualising treatment modalities' the person-centred approach stands and says NO, that is not the way forward.
— Richard Bryant-Jefferies, Counselling a Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse: A Person-Centred Dialogue
It is easier to call the storm from the empty sky than to manipulate the heart of a man; and soon, if my bones did not lie to me, I should be needing all the power I could muster, to pit against a woman; and this is harder to do than anything concerning men, as air is harder to see than a mountain.
— Mary  Stewart, The Last Enchantment
What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison...
— Jeanne DuPrau, The City of Ember
Superior might does not guarantee success, especially in a war where political considerations dominate.
— Richard H. Shultz Jr.
Still, if I don't believe in the possibility, I might go mad from fear.
— Libbie Hawker, Daughter of Sand and Stone
Van Eck raised a brow. "How old are you, girl? Sixteen? Seventeen? Nations rise and fall. Markets are made and unmade. When power shifts, someone always suffers.
— Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
For now, let us simply observe that the assault on human dignity is one of the prime goals of the visitation of fear, a prelude to the domination of the mind and the triumph of power
— Wole Soyinka
My knees will not tremble at the sight of a King but I will kneel down before a man of humility.
— Princess Maleiha Bajunaid Candao
In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. On this planet nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. Girls and boys, men and women who have been taught this way almost always believe love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important as being powerful, dominant, in control, on top-being right. Women who give seemingly selfless adoration and care to the men in their lives appear to be obsessed with 'love,' but in actuality their actions are often a covert way to hold power. Like their male counterparts, they enter relationships speaking the words of love even as their actions indicate that maintaining power and control is their primary agenda.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
We are what we read -- and the power of books to transform the minds and personalities of their readers can give cause for anxiety as well as for celebration.
— Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century
Bliss is doing that which fulfills you. Action that touches you deeply and fully. Bliss is active. Bliss is...following your dreams, desires, or heart. Bliss is that deep, fulfilling, sustainable, driving need you have. That thing that is the true "you."Your bliss is your life's purpose. Your bliss gives your otherwise meaningless life meaning. When you are following your bliss you are powerful and empowered. You are focused and the universe is waiting to help you.
— Angie karan
Your Presentation is you Capability
— Aayush Jain
The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.
— David Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress
There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly.
— David Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress
There is nothing humble about this woman.
— Libbie Hawker, Daughter of Sand and Stone
Because it is my destiny, Zabdas! Because I've always known the gods made me for something more -- more than just a wife, just a mother, just a woman. They made me for power!
— Libbie Hawker, Daughter of Sand and Stone
Get rich or die trying
— 50 Cent, From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens
Without inspiration, innovation is dead.
— Liam Levi, Thousand Sinful Kisses
It is only in grammar that the mighty can be bound by rules made by the humble
— Agona Apell, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning Men from Rot to Rock
Your Presentation is your Capability.
— Aayush Jain
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
— John Emerich Edward Dalberg
while "freedom" from magic is certainly invoked as a constitutive element of modern modes of subjectivity, this freedom is purchased only at the price of potent new forms of social control and regimenta
— Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World
Social power is at stake in theory-making, but the workings of this power are often unacknowledged -- and overdeter
— Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World
[Bruno] Latour argues that one of the foundational gestures of western modernity has been the effort to formulate and police a heightened antimony between nonhuman nature and human cu
— Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World
A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.
— Iain M. Banks
My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.
— S. Cisneros
My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all the away. He power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.
— S. Cisneros
Power and glory are two dialectic energies working in common ground. Taking a glimpse of the meandering under swell of glory in the shade of power, can be very inspiring and illuminating. ("The power and the glory" )
— Erik Pevernagie
Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion sufficient enough to love and save each other.
— Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy.
— Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.
— Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
You don't need luck. You are powerful, clever, and fearless.
— Shannon Hale, The Unfairest of Them All
Superior, do you understand me? These are white people. They are not like you, or me or us. They have the power to hurt you ... and sometimes it's fun to them when they do. Their power is not because they are smart ... it's because ... something happened sometime ... started somewhere and they got on top of the world. They got the power. The only power you got is to learn to live with them, learn to read their minds ... til you can do better. They don't treat each other right ... so don't you look to be treated right. You hear me? Sometimes there's good white people ... but don't you act like that til you know that.
— J. California Cooper, Some Soul to Keep
Those who think, Present.
— Aayush Jain
When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.
— Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
There would always be dishonorable things done to preserve the honor of any power.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Quest
WAKE UP NOW...You will become a history one day...Even if you are most important, most powerful, most wanted or most influential individual on the planet. THAT’S IT!
— Aditya Ajmera
What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.... Be very chary of revealing your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else's strings.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Quest
If I have a spreadsheet that can, whatever, turn soup cans into gold, wouldn't I deserve an office?
— Charlie Close, Before the Ripcord Broke: Stories
Power breeds resentment and withers the slow-growing plant that is trust, and people who use it to capture others not only fail to make friends but often end up captives themselves. And perhaps what is sadder still is that when you control other people you take away all that there might be in a real encounter with them and replace it with your fears. And while you might get gratitude for a while, or guilt and tears, you won't get what they had to offer if you'd let them give you what was really in their hearts.
— Merle Shain, When Lovers Are Friends
Always use your powers to create positive experiences for yourself and others.
— Steven Redhead, Unleash The Power of Your Heart and Mind
Open your eyes to what wonder exists in the world. You have within your the power to create the life you want.
— Steven Redhead, Unleash The Power of Your Heart and Mind
In any power game, it seems, the dominant party is the least likely to be aware of what is going on.
— Tim Parks, Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books
Think about rethinking what you're thinking, before speaking the thought you were thinking, and cause unintended consequences for speaking what you probably shouldn't have been thinking.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Suspense was an excellent tool for keeping powerful people off balance. It gave one bargaining power.
— Robin Hobb, City of Dragons
Babies have the power to make grumpy people happy because they love you no matter what. Dogs are that way, too.
— Mariel Hemingway, Invisible Girl
A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
— Hilary Mantel
Enzo inherited a throne. Giulietta relied on her royal blood. Queen Maeve rules Beldain because she was born to it. But true rulers are not born. We are made.
— Marie Lu, The Rose Society
I have spent my entire life thinking of the Inquisitors as things, soulless creatures. But they are just men. Men can be swayed, and I have the power to do it.
— Marie Lu, The Rose Society
Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]
— Noam Chomsky
My arrivalHer womb’s delightHer existenceMy living lightHer woundsMy scarsHer skiesMy starsHer daysMy hoursHer strengthMy powersI breathe my name Being her childWithout motherLife’s beguiledFrom the poem 'Mother
— Munia Khan, Beyond The Vernal Mind
So often our power lies not in ourselves, but in how we help others find their own strength.
— Amy Lee Peine
It's amazing how much power a smile holds. It's contagious and brightens people's day. It's also the most powerful camouflage. For that person who seems to have it all together is merely masking the pain of drowning tears. Don't be so quick to assume.
— Brittany Burgunder, Safety in Numbers: From 56 to 221 Pounds, My Battle with Eating Disorders
Having a positive attitude gives you power. This isn't the same kind of power that dictators and warlords seek after, but rather a spiritual power. It's a power that comes to us from God.
— Lindsey Rietzsch, The Happy Lady
I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.
— Nawal El-Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero
The oppressor is solidary wit the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor -- when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.
— Paolo Freire
I could run farther than a hare! I could fight the fiercest fox that ever lived...I could climb the highest mountain faster than an eagle could fly.
— Erin Hunter, Outcast
To be altarless is to be voiceless
— Steven Chuks Nwaokeke
The greatest obstacle to liberty is not the existence of evil rulers, but the belief in the existence of good rulers.
— Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
I am a man, and as foolish and weak as most men; if I have had an advantage over my fellows, it is that I have known this of myself, and have therefore known their weaknesses, and never presumed to find much more strength and wisdom in myself than I found in another. It was one of the sources of my power, that knowledge.
— John  Williams
The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.
— Ezra Taft Benson
A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty.
— Shan Sa, Empress
Just hope. Hope is filled with power.
— Debasish Mridha
You have the power to make your own choices. Everything in this world depends upon you ... its all about how you want to spend your life .. once you understand this fact you can come out of illusions of life .. just ask yourself what you want !! Your heart will definitely tell you the truth, and then ... who stops you ??? Its a question and answer as well
— Angie karan
Some people get what they want because they grab the power and swing it, and some people don’t.
— Dan Groat, Monarchs and Mendicants
Politics is all about dividing up the power. Washington D.C. likes to talk about spreading the wealth, but never spreading the power.
— Dan Groat, Monarchs and Mendicants
If I have not been both soothed by love and on the opposite extreme left devastated by it, I will never understand its power nor respect its majesty.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
She broke my heart. My mother broke my heart. If I love Rachel she’ll have more power than both of them combined because this overwhelming pulse in my body...this overwhelming need to protect her and hold her close...I nuzzle into her hair and close my eyes, inhaling the sweet scent of jasmine. I should let her go, let her go, just let her go. Walk away now. Hang on to what’s left of my s
— Katie McGarry, Crash into You
People don’t talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary
— Alexander McCall Smith, At the Reunion Buffet
Three generations before I was the one meant for the necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in theair, yes, lift my body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him.
— Anne Rice, The Witching Hour
No, war is never about killing the enemy. War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.
— David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It
O’Brien: How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?Winston: By making him suffer.O’Brien: Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
— George Orwell
Governments have absolutely no interest in self-reliance. It defeats one of the purposes for their existence. They encourage and thrive on dependency. The more of it they sell, the more necessary they are, and the more power and money they need.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
There’s a power I only feel when I’m with Isaiah. A boldness I’ve never possessed in my life. Never in a million years would I have imagined I’d be the girl who’d say she was falling fast for a boy before he did. Never in a million years did I think I’d be lying in bed with a totally ripped guy that has his shirt off. But Isaiah has this effect on me. He makes me feel stronger than I really am.
— Katie McGarry, Dare You To
Our culture, so proud of its mind-over-matter philosophy, cuts us off from our bodily experience and from the earth itself. In this severance, our sexuality is negated, our senses assaulted, our environment abused, and our power manipulated. Our ground is our form, and without it we lose our individuality.
— Anodea Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System As a Path to the Self
If I burn the candles, it means not only giving you light. It means to show you the fire which I have inside.
— Gaurav GRV Sharma
One must command from each what each can preform.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I wonder if they were aware of the power of complimentary alcohol during World War I.
— Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
You have to realize that modern power, is nothing but a concept in the mind of the one who’s under the power. And once you realize this, you realize that authority is indeed an illusion.
— Phoenix Sinistra
It was Tigerstar's ambition that destroyed him. If he had been willing to wait for power to come to him, he would've been the greatest leader in the forest.
— Erin Hunter, Outcast
Power makes you lazy. Insofar as our earlier theoretical discussion of structural violence revealed anything, it was this: that while those in situations of power and privilege often feel it as a terrible burden of responsibility, in most ways, most of the time, power is all about what you don't have to worry about, don't have to know about, and don't have to do.
— David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
The power of our country relies on the character that comes out of each of our homes.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
Most people throw away their personal power... If you want to know where, look at who and what you hate, blame, resent, and envy.
— Steve Maraboli
In general the power drive is given free rein when it can appear under the cloak of objective and moral rectitude. People are the most cruel when they can use cruelty to enforce the "good."In daily life we often suffer pages of conscience when we permit ourselves to be excessively motivated by the power drive. But these guilt feelings completely disappear from consciousness when our actions, while unconsciously motivated by a lust for power, can be consciously justified by that which is allegedly right and good.
— guggenhbuhl-craig
The silent workers get lost in the endlessdarkness of the corporate world. Thosewho work hard and constantly seek tobe visible to their superiors, those whoshowcase their hard work, are the ones whoadvance to positions of greater power andresponsibility.
— Abhishek Ratna, No Parking. No Halt. Success Non Stop!
I know what it's like to have a power no other cat understands. It's the loneliest feeling in the world.
— Erin Hunter, The Fourth Apprentice
Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it.
— Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra
Why do you write strong female characters?Because you're still asking me that question.
— Joss Whedon
There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
He is an idiot," I said. "One who thinks he's a genius/ They're the most dangerous kind.""No, the most dangerous kind are the ones with power," he said.
— Aimee Carter, Queen
I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
— Benjamin Zander
I also realized by the way he actually cared that I could hurt him, really hurt him, if I wanted to. That's a power no one should ever realize. It's toxic.
— Rebecca Timberlake, Independent Will
Power in society is achieved through control of the purse, pen, and politics.
— Orrin Woodward
Man can attempt to become one with the world by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. In this way, he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself, and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted.
— Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
Right. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining? That's a totally different world.
— Benjamin Zander
God is a symbol of imaginative power
—  he has as much power and love as you can imagine.
Can anyone name a president who really had the citizens in mind during the majority of his decisions in office? None of them did, and the current ones don’t either. It’s all about power, keeping power, and dishing out power to those who throw the most money at them.
— Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake
The promises of prayer are extraordinary, but for prayer to work as God promises it to work, it must be purged of self and doubt.
— Leslie Ludy, Wrestling Prayer: A Passionate Communion with God
I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well. Because only fear rules men. Nothing else works. Nothing else lasts long enough.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
I'm playing checkers while they're playing chessThey make the big moves that make me a little lessEven when I win and beat the pants off of the bestI'm still playing checkers while they're playing chess
— Billy Joe Shaver
Confronting discomfort is giving me strength, in a world where perfect strangers can render me powerless.
— Veronica Larsen, Enamor
Vincent Marc Hoherz. On power.The most effective way to loose your power is to make use of it.
— Vincent Marc Hoherz, Forever Shall We Be, Eternally.
I have heard the predictable slew of insults, threats, epithets, and curses. Underneath all these, I hear their fear. They don’t want to hurt me, though I may serve as a stand-in for a man who they do want to hurt. They want to scare me because fear is the only way they have learned to feel powerful.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Juvenile Justice: A Reference Handbook, 2nd Edition: A Reference Handbook
O my soul, is not this enough? Dost thou need more strength than the omnipotence of the United Trinity? Dost thou want more wisdom than exists in the Father, more love than displays itself in the Son, or more power than is manifest in the influences of the Spirit?
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Take your desires for reality!" can be understood as the ultimate slogan of power.
— Jean Baudrillard
We like the shadows. That's where all the power is.
— Gail Carriger, Manners & Mutiny
Why did this [Vietnam] war, so hard, so long, so ferocious, vanish from one day to the next as if by magic?Why did this American defeat (the largest reversal in the history of the USA) have no internal repercussions in America? If it had really signified the failure of the planetary strategy of the United States, it would necessarily have completely disrupted its internal balance and the American political system.
— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
The only weapon of power, its only strategy against this defection, is to reinject the real and the referential everywhere, to persuade us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy and the finalities of production.
— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
I came to see the streets and the schools as the arms of the same beast. One enjoyed the official power of the state while the other enjoyed its implicit sanction. But fear and violence were the weaponry of both.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
The black world was expanding before me, and I could see now that that world was more than a photonegative of that of the people who believe they are white. "White America" is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, "white people" would cease to exist for want of reasons.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drank of the untaxed liquor of Satan’s still.
— Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
But this aura of an artificial menace was still necessary to conceal that they [Presidents] were no longer anything but the mannequins of power. Formerly, the king (also the god) had to die, therein lay his power. Today, he is miserably forced to feign death, in order to preserve the blessing of power. But it is lost.
— Jean Baudrillard
There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage-in controlling something, period.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term side effects.
— David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
I have only one power that is my power of love.
— Debasish Mridha M.D.
Maybe we can help. Where are you from? I've never seen you around here before. And, how did you get that cut? Where are you staying?” He shook his head and giggled. “Are you the police? You ask a lot of questions Phoenix.” “No. I just ... never mind.” I wanted to know more about him. The way those sparkly green eyes gazed at me. The way his dimples sunk deep into his cheeks, as he smiled and said my name with his deep voice.
— N.I.
The difference being that people fear us. When people fear you, you have power.
— Evelyn Smith, The Summer of Secrets
But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme power that is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination - the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God?
— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
Consumers are what’s going to change the world, not necessarily industries or governments,
— Horace Luke