c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
For the fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind's fertility: it contains the mind's promise, since its fertility depends on the unexpected rather than the expected, depends on what we do not know, and because we do not know it, than what we know.
— Paul Valéry, Selected Writings
The great cognitive shift is an expansion of consciousness from the perspectival form contained in the lives of particular creatures to an objective, world-encompassing form that exists both individually and intersubjectively. It was originally a biological evolutionary process, and in our species it has become a collective cultural process as well. Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.
— Thomas Nagel
Life never goes according to plan. That's okay, because often our plans are much smaller than life intends. Probably EASIER, but smaller.
— Stacey T. Hunt
Doubtful heart weakens mind.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
One thunderbolt strikesroot through everything
— Heraclitus, Fragments
What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind.
— Wendell Phillips
And so the mind or spirit is the great opportunist, itself impossible to pin down, take hold of, anywhere; one is tempted to believe that of all its influence nothing is left but decay. Every advance is a gain in particular and a separation in general; it is an increase in power leading only to a progressive increase in impotence, but there is no way to quit.
— Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities: Vol. 1
The artist realizes himself in his work
—  the mind realizes itself in life.
I am drawn to a fourth alternative, natural teleology, or teleological bias, as an account of the existence of the biological possibilities on which natural selection can operate. I believe that teleology is a naturalistic alternative that is distinct from all three of the other candidate explanations: chance, creationism, and directionless physical law. To avoid the mistake that White finds in the hypothesis of nonintentional bias, teleology would have to be restrictive in what it makes likely, but without depending on intentions or motives. This would probably have to involve some conception of an increase in value through the expanded possibilities provided by the higher forms of organization toward which nature tends: not just any outcome could qualify as a telos. That would make value an explanatory end, but not one that is realized through the purposes or intentions of an agent. Teleology means that in addition to physical law of the familiar kind, there are other laws of nature that are "biased toward the marvelous".
— Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
Thought assists memory in enabling it to order the material it has assembled. So that in a systematically ordered memory every idea is individually followed by all conclusions it entails.
— Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
I "love" reading.It makes me feel like I am swallowing up Christ, Homer, Confucius, Newton, Franklin, Socrates, Caesar, and the whole world into one gigantic invincible Sir Moffat. Mine is creative reading. I read building empires in mind. I pray I won't read and read and forget to marry.
— Moffat Machingura
Ego is like an antivirus which eventually takes unwanted control of the computer itself.
— Saurabh Sharma
When we live our life as if it is an open book, we are free in body, mind, and spirit and allow anyone to read from our pages.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
Your mind is the most powerful wonder. It can be your greatest enemy or your closest ally.There are no limits to what you can achieve if only you believe.
— Michelle Horst, The Land of Shadows
People only go to the places they have visited first in their minds," she says, uttering the phrase as if secrets to the universe have just been shared. "Perhaps that is how learning can help you. However, first you must see it, feel it, and then believe it. When you do, where it takes you may surprise.
— Camron Wright, The Rent Collector
This wobbly worldhost to insects and lintand a thousand pithy waysto feel unserious each minuteIt brings abouta great softening of the mind, likethe clouded edges of sea glass (thisfilter you could download and apply)A poultice or an opiate,rigidly individual. Aloneand erasing sentences to splinters.(Poem No. 5)
— Erin J. Watson, No Experiences: Poems
I have read a lot about God and soul, but I have no experience of it; my name is Mind.
— Saurabh Sharma
Don't you know romance is mind's way of getting rid of it's own duality?
— Saurabh Sharma
So-called intellectuals have ego-power
—  Fools have willpower.
your perception is your right in your mind
— cG9sYXJhZGl0aWE=
Happiness is a state of mind. It's just according to the way you look at things.
— Walt Disney Company
DETOX your mind, body, AND your contact list.
— SupaNova Slom, The Remedy: The Five-Week Power Plan to Detox Your System, Combat the Fat, and Rebuild Your Mind and Body
If a man is not sure of his future, he should consciously adjust his thinking.
— Duop Chak Wuol
You can't fight a battle you don't think exists.
— John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?
— Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love
Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state ... Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.
— Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Hearts In MeIf I look to the world with hearts in my eyesThen surely I’ll be intrigued and inspired.If I touch the world with hearts in my handsThen surely I’ll learn how to understand.If I listen to the world with hearts in my earsThen surely I’ll truly be able to hear.If I speak with the world with hearts in my mouthThen surely I’ll be kind and gentle enough.If I think of the world with hearts in my mindThen surely I’ll be awake to all life.If I reach for the world with hearts in my palmsThen surely its love will flow through my arms
— Jay Woodman
How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life? We might, as a society, slowly find it possible to accept that one in four citizens are likely to have experience some form of emotional, psychical, sexual or spiritual abuse (McQueen, Itzin, Kennedy, Sinason, & Maxted, 2008), in itself a figure unimaginable and hidden twenty years ago. However, accepting the way a hurt and hurting parent or stranger re-enacts their disturbance with a vulnerable child or children remains far easier to digest than to consider the intellectually planned, scientific, methodical, procedures of organized child-abusing perpetrators-in other words, torture.
— Valerie Sinason
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.
— Idries Shah, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study
No two human beings are alike; it's a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don't, you don't, nobody does. All we know—or think we know—is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
A Soul Knowing: You are the sum total of the Body, Mind, and Soul, and each of these aspects of you has a purpose and a function, but only one has an agenda: the Soul.
— Neale Donald Walsch
Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored
— Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
Sometimes both your mind and thoughts are paying the cost of your stupid heart.
— M.F. Moonzajer
The natural and untainted male mind respects and loves the woman and her magnificent scope of capability and creative gifts.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Keep a positive mind. Remember, a failed attempt doesn’t make you a failure—giving up does.
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
This is about me being ready to succeed.When I win in my mind, I truly win.Anything worthwhile deserves some time.I will do it this time! No excuses!
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The real battlefield is the realm of ideas.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Visualization engages the mind and encourages the body.
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
My plate is full; I dig that. And I can't be everywhere all the time, but my mind, heart and spirit has no bounds.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
I cannot squeeze the stars
—  but I can squeeze my mind to feel the moon compressed.
You can set your mind to anything, just keep concentrating.
— Dylan Anders Porter
he seemed to be in quest for mental food, not heart sustenance.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
You shouldn't change your mind, your heart. Go get happy.
— Ariel Seraphino
The mind may never achieve or express anything great unless emotion plays a part.
— Ben Johnson
The greatest crimes in the world are not committed against the body, but against the freedom of the consciousness.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
The maladies of the spirit alone, in abstracto, that is, error and sin, can be called diseases of the mind only per analogiam. They come not within the jurisdiction of the physician, but that of the teacher or clergyman, who again are called physicians of the mind only per analogiam.
— Ernst Von Feuchtersleben
Strength of the mind is more powerful than strength of the muscles.
— Ana Monnar, Express Yourself 101 Kaleidoscope Volume 3
When we change our thoughts, we will change our experiences.
— Michael Thomas Sunnarborg, 21 Days to Better Balance: Find More Balance in a Busy World
I should curl up in a ball and cry. Instead i think about everything in the whole entire world that makes me angry - There is a lot, oh, there is a lot - and I start singing Justin Bieber at the top of my lungs.
— Kiersten White, Mind Games
For the Stoics, then, our judgments about the world are all that we can control, but also all that we need to control in order to be happy; tranquility results from replacing our irrational judgments with rational ones
— Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.
— Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop
A heartful mind can always see better than mindless eyes
— Munia Khan
If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn't inherent in the place but in your state of mind.
— Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change
Think it over carefully. This is very important," I say, "because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Consciousness is a vast ocean and thinking is the waves & ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave & ripple has a very short lived life - it is very fleeting Do not identify with your thoughts - continued indentification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious dysfunction in ones sense of identity...
— Eckhart Tolle
It taught that there are three versions of things: the one I see in my mind, and the one that carries onto the paper, and then what it ultimately becomes.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Instead of letting our emotions run amok, we can use our minds as tools to build or create realities that serve us better
— Jay Woodman
By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep
— Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.
— Eckhart Tolle
Tis the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
— Aristotle
The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail.
— Sri Aurobindo
What treaty is it that finally separates those two territories, the hard resolve of our exteriors and the terrible disaster on our insides?
— Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.
— Charles Duhigg
World & people only seem unlovable due to toxins & lies they've been fed. Release distortions of mind. Return all to innocence & freedom
— Jay Woodman
Intelligence is not measured by the mind's ability to compute, but by the heart's will to contrive.
— Kimberly Stedronsky Adams, Fall
Love yourself enough to take care of your health of mind, body, and soul as a top priority, then you'lll be fit to face anything.
— Jay Woodman
So it is with the mind, Nandini. Allow it to be in balance. Avoid extremes: the middle way is better. Neither force the mind too hard into concentration nor let it wander aimlessly. Meditation is to pay attention, to be aware of your breathing, your posture, your feelings, your perceptions, your thoughts, and all that passes through your mind and the mind itself; whatever is going on within you and between you and the universe. Meditation is not just sitting for an hour here or an hour there; meditation is a way of life. It is practiced all the time. There is no separation between meditation and everyday living. When you have ceased to be bound by the past or by the future, when you are fully present in the here and now, then it is meditation.
— Satish Kumar, The Buddha and the Terrorist
Beauty lies in the mind, inner soul....Beauty lies in the innocence, appreciation, understanding, warmth, expressions, caring nature, behavior towards others, the depth of understanding the situations, the kind of sufferings, struggles, losses, difficulties, sorrows, happiness- the thick n thins through which person sails throughout hi/her life. Which ultimately reflects on your face- the ultimate reflection of your mind and thus evolves a beautiful personality.
— Sriveena Dhagavkar
The only way you can own this moment is to evict the victim mentality from the dwelling of your mind.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
It was strange what Chris was feeling within, but he didn’t mind for he was loving her.
— Moffat Machingura, How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye
Just like sweeping the streets, sweep the unnecessary things from your mind too; keep your mind clean!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
You’re an English major, aren't you?” “Hey!” Immediately retreating, Keith swatted at him with a dishcloth. “Leave my brain alone. It’s resting.” “Sorry, sorry.” He leaned away, hands up to display his surrender. “I didn't mean it, I take it back.” “You’d better
— Matthew Haldeman-Time, Hot Weather
But there is saying, and there is doing, and almost always people do something better than they can talk about it, as though the minded body defeats every attempt to select out only the mind part as deserving sole responsibility for the success.
— Alice Koller, An Unknown Woman
I don’t have a mind to mindI only have a heartthat loves and cares
— Amit Abraham
Plenty of foods inside my stomach.Soul is empty.
— Munia Khan
The most incredible architectureIs the architecture of Self,which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breatheyou are adding to your lifeand every out breathe you are releasing what is not contributing to your life.Every breathe is a re-birth.
— Allan Rufus, The Master's Sacred Knowledge
Your perspective is always limited by how much you know. Expand your knowledge and you will transform your mind.
— Bruce H. Lipton
In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
— Alain de Botton
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
— Seneca
Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being
—  it is not your totality.
Having books standing on a shelf in a room is like having completely different worlds at the ready, waiting to be explored.
— J.F Hermann
I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.
— Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal, Vol 1: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel
As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting pressure. There was no way out once he was in, no genuine rest, no one to talk to who was capable of understanding the complexity (simplicity) of the problem or the approaches to a tentative solution. There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or "terror in a lonely place," the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind. As a mathematician he was free from subjection to reality, free to impose his ideas and designs on his own test environment. The only valid standard for his work, its critical point (zero or infinity), was the beauty it possessed, the deft strength of his mathematical reasoning. THe work's ultimate value was simply what it revealed about the nature of his intellect. What was at stake, in effect, was his own principle of intelligence or individual consciousness; his identity, in short. This was the infalling trap, the source of art's private involvement with obsession and despair, neither more nor less than the artist's self-containment, a mental state that led to storms of overwork and extended stretches of depression, that brought on indifference to life and at times the need to regurgitate it, to seek the level of expelled matter. Of course, the sense at the end of a serious effort, if the end is reached successfully, is one of lyrical exhilaration. There is air to breathe and a place to stand. The work gradually reveals its attachment to the charged particles of other minds, men now historical, the rediscovered dead; to the main structure of mathematical thought; perhaps even to reality itself, the so-called sum of things. It is possible to stand in time's pinewood dust and admire one's own veronicas and pavanes.
— Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star
In his article, Bogen concluded: “I believe [with Wigan] that each of us has two minds in one person. There is a host of detail to be marshaled in this case. But we must eventually confront directly the principal resistance to the Wigan view: that is, the subjective feeling possessed by each of us that we are One. This inner conviction of Oneness is a most cherished opinion of Western Man. . . .
— Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
— Baruch Spinoza
If we deny the need for thought, Moneo, as some do, we lose the powers of reflection; we cannot define what our senses report. If we deny the flesh, we unwheel the vehicle which bears us. But if we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe. It was emotions which I missed the most.
— Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
When I feel clumsy or lost, I remind myself that nature, including me, was created by a a far wiser mind than mine. There is something in the cosmos - God, Spirit, Consciousness, Life Itself, call It what you will - that created and orchestrates nature, and did a pretty good job of it. Nature might just know what It's doing. Even when I don't.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace
A good woman keeps her mind right and her body tight.
— Habeeb Akande
It's a mind, it works by metaphor.
— Simon J. Townley, Lost In Thought
Ambition: it is the last infirmity of noble minds.
— J.M. Barrie
...our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives.
— Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
The mind is a universe, and it has the power to completely create any possibility.
— Lionel Suggs
They don't directly listen to you.They just hear things within their minds that triggered by your words.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
We have created a mindset in our society where everyone wants what they want when they want it. And if we don't get what we want when we want it, we feel ripped off. To make matters worse, we intensify our problems by continuously rehashing our woe-is-me story to the entire world. Whatever it is that has the potential to keep you from enjoying the day, understand that it's not the situation itself that is causing you to be unhappy. It's your thoughts and how you allow them to control you. It's what you choose to focus on that fuels your emotions and defines your reality.
— Steve Rizzo
To Mr. Jones, she said, imagine you're looking up at a blue sky, and imagine a tiny airplane skywriting the letter Z. Then let the wind erase the letter. Then imagine the plane writing the letter Y. Let the wind erase it. Then the letter X. Erase it. Then the letter W. Let the wind erase it.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Set forth no limits, keep in mind that your potential is boundless.
— Sal Martinez
My mind knows what is right, but my flesh is at war against my spirit?
— Deborah N. Kabwang, Secrets Buried in the Soul
You have to know your own mind inside out before you can know the minds of others.
— Carla H. Krueger
If you put a clock in a bottle, with time it will crack,as like money, as like love, as like a beautiful mind, empty of a soul.
— Anthony Liccione
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
— Oscar Wilde
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
— Abraham Lincoln
How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.
— Kristin Cashore, Graceling
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
— George Orwell, 1984
Patience is power.Patience is not an absence of action;rather it is "timing"it waits on the right time to act,for the right principlesand in the right way.
— Fulton J. Sheen
If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.
— Malcolm X
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
— Margaret Thatcher
They joined hands.So the world ended.And the next one began.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
— Plato
Names have power.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
— Philip K. Dick
You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. 
— Paulo Freire
There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie
—  repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.
— Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
— George Orwell, 1984
Where there is power, there is resistance.
— Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
You gain power by pretending to be weak.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders’ insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion.
— Bonnie Myotai Treace
A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?Two things result from this fact.I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
— Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.
— Charles de Gaulle
But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
When one with honeyed words but evil mindPersuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
— Euripides, Orestes
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
— George Orwell, 1984
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
— William Hutchison Murray
Power was my weakness and my temptation.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.
— Clive Barker
When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
— Napoleon Hill
You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care about and really want to protect. Would you let someone take advantage of that person? Would you let someone use that person you really care about? Or would you speak up for them? If it was someone else you care about, you'd say something. I know you would. Okay, now put yourself back in that body. That person is you. Stand up and tell 'em, "Enough!
— Queen Latifah, Put on Your Crown: Life-Changing Moments on the Path to Queendom
...But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will tun wild and cause you grief.
— Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
— Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
That's what we all want, isn't it? Power without price.
— Kelley Armstrong, The Summoning
I can give her no greater power than she has already, said the woman; don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.
— Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen
Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
We Lannisters do have a certain pride," said Tyrion Lannister.“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry. “Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.
— Marianne Williamson
If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Match Me If You Can
Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
— Elie Wiesel
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
I know, better than anyone else, that there are no heroes coming to save us. There are no good Epics. None of them protect us. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
— Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart
The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.
— Adolf Hitler
To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn't make me do — you could put me through hell if you demanded them and I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It's so simple. Of course you do. All of me that can be owned. You'll never demand anything else. But you want to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it?" The words did not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know them to be true, and still remain controlled and controlling — as she wanted him to remain.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?
— Kiersten White, And I Darken
There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.
— Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best
— Otto von Bismarck
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house
— Audre Lorde
Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.
— Susan Cain
I have done this—made the sad prince laugh. Made his grieving parents smile. None but me. Think you only kings have power? Stand on a stage and hold the hearts of men in your hands. Make them laugh with a gesture, cry with a word. Make them love you. And you will know what power is.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.
— Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.
— Adolf Hitler
There is power and there is power, my dear. My power can be vast, in the right places.
— Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Queen
At that moment, Harry fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye moody was more terrible than Harry could have ever imagined. There was no benign smile upon Dumbledore's face, no twinkle in the eyes behind the spectacles. There was cold fury in every line of the ancient face; a sense of power radiated from Dumbledore as though he were giving off burning heat.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Words have power.
— Mira Grant, Blackout
Do the thing and you will have the power.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
They key of persistence opens all door closed by resistence 
— John Di Lemme
I thought the love I'd had for him belonged to the past, to the foolish, lonely girl I never wanted to be again. I'd tried to bury that girl and the love she'd felt, just as I'd tried to bury my power. But I wouldn't make that mistake again.
— Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone
Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead
Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.
— Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Ships are my arrows, the sea my bow, the world my target.
— Robert Thier, Storm and Silence
Power resides where men believe it resides. A very small man can cast a very large shadow.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
You can measure the true strength of a man by how well he controls others, but you measure his true power by how well he controls himself
— Amari Soul, Reflections Of A Man
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
— Frederick Douglass
Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is power.
— Gregory Corso
The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender.
— William Booth
profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Powerful people have no regrets.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.
— Judith Lewis Herman
Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.
— Mercedes Lackey, Alta
You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.
— Kathleen Hanna
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
— John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.
— John Ratzenberger
When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.
— Wendy Mass, Every Soul a Star
If I look at the mass I will never act.
— Mother Teresa
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
— Frederick Douglass
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light. A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained. The darkness paused for breath. They erupted.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous".
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. "Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.
— Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people. 
— Toni Morrison
Sexual energy between two people is a primal force comprised of power (energy that moves toward another) and virtue (knowing the energy between the two is right).
— Alexandra Katehakis, Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While in Recovery from Sex Addiction
There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose