Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes on Power
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Any community's arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
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The wounded want power, nothing else; they think it will keep them from being hurt again.
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Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.
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The will to be stupid is a very powerful force.
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You can't give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously.
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Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.
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If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?
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Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.
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If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I'd already lost it.
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A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.