Quotes · Skopia

29 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Power✕clear

Speech · Political speech

Every Communist must grasp the truth: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

1938

★ 7.2

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Henry Kissinger

1971

★ 7.0

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

1887

★ 6.9

Power may justly be compared to a great River, while kept within its due Bonds, is both Beautiful and Useful; but when it overflows its Banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemm'd, it bears down all before it, and brings Destruction and Desolation wherever it comes. If then this is the Nature of Power, let us at least do our Duty, and like wise Men (who value Freedom) use our utmost Care to support Liberty, the only Bulwark against lawless Power, which in all Ages has sacrificed to it's wild Lust and boundless Ambition, the Blood of the best Men that ever liv'd.

Andrew Hamilton

1735

★ 5.9

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Riches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 4.0

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it... One must have the courage to dare.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment · 1866

★ 4.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.9

Film · Western (film) · Western

You see in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend—those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · 1966

★ 3.9

Historical literature

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Histories · 430 BC

★ 3.8

Scripture · Religious literature

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Matthew 16:26 · 60

★ 3.8

Essay · Political literature

It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

Federalist 48 · 1788

★ 3.8

Four things greater than all things are,— Women and Horses and Power and War.

Rudyard Kipling

1890

★ 3.7

Essay · Magazine · Political literature

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 3.7

TV program · Fantasy (TV) · Drama (TV) · Fantasy · Drama

Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

Game of Thrones · 2012

★ 3.6

Psychological literature

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

The Psychology of the Unconscious · 1912

★ 3.5

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1913

★ 3.5

Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.

1986

★ 3.5

Political literature

To have power means not to have to give in, and to force the environment or the other person to do so. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listen. In a sense, it is the ability to afford not to learn.

1966

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent.

Abraham Lincoln

1854

★ 2.2

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.

Oskar Schindler

Schindler's List · 1993

★ 2.2

Speech · Political speech

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

1771

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham

1770

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.

On Violence · 1969

★ 1.9

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automation.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Queen Mab · 1813

★ 1.9

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

William Hazlitt

1819

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

1834

★ 1.9

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

The Wayward Press · 1960

★ 1.9

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Whoever is responsible for another's becoming powerful ruins himself.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1513

★ 1.4

Autobiography and memoir

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies.

1907

★ 1.1