60 Power dynamics Quotes

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Ours is a golden age of minorities. At no time in the past have dissident minorities felt so much at home and had so much room to throw their weight around. They speak and act as if they were 'the people,' and what they abominate most is the dissent of the majority.

Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows, and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon - so long as there is no answer to it - gives claws to the weak.

Note the difference between a right and a privilege. A right, in the abstract, is a fact; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never. Privilege, in the abstract, does not exist; there is no such thing. Rights recognized, privilege is destroyed. But, in the practical, the moment you admit a supreme authority, you have denied rights. Practically the supremacy has all the rights, and no matter what the human race possesses, it does so merely at the caprice of that authority.

'Why don't you ever use your strength on me?' she said. 'Because love means renouncing strength,' said Franz softly.-

If you didn't serve the nasty fellow (God), the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down.

One should see the dominant role of the weak in shaping man's fate not as a perversion of natural instincts and vital impulses, but as the starting point of the deviation which led man to break away from, and rise above, nature - not as degeneration but as the generation of a new order of creation. The corruption inherent in absolute power derives from the fact that such power is never free from the tendency to turn man into a thing, and press him back into the matrix of nature from which he has risen. For the impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

The significant point is that people unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a 'have' type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a 'have-not' type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power. Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: to have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others. To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.

Kurt Angle, you think you're really special because you've cashed in on the services of one Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, a two dollar no, a fifty cent no, buy two get one free does any one have change for a nickel skank ass slut?

When I quoted Bulwer Lytton's 'The pen is mightier than the sword' to Marty Feldman he added reflectively, 'Yes, and considerably easier to write with.'

[Canadians] better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.

Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power -- Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry -- love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously. It has nothing to do with their being women. It has to do with their cheap paths to power. Kevin Federline isn't taken seriously either.

When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.

The attitude of the intellectual community toward America is shaped not by the creative few but by the many who for one reason or another cannot transmute their dissatisfaction into a creative impulse, and cannot acquire a sense of uniqueness and of growth by developing and expressing their capacities and talents. There is nothing in contemporary America that can cure or alleviate their chronic frustration. They want power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action. Even if we should banish poverty from the land, lift up the Negro to true equality, withdraw from Vietnam, and give half of the national income as foreign aid, they will still see America as an air-conditioned nightmare unfit for them to live in.

Kaltenbrunner had great personal weaknesses; above all he drank, which in itself was enough to damn him in the eyes of Heydrich, who of course exploited this weakness in his usual effective way.

So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, when things go backward.

Himmler was such a coward he refused or was afraid to act because of Kaltenbrunner and Hitler.

Il y a deux amours: celui qui commande et celui qui obeit; ils sont distincts et donnent naissance a deux passions, et l'une n'est pas l'autre.

That man always made it a point to speak German, although he spoke English well enough. That was because he imitated Hitler to the last degree. He would say that his reason for speaking German instead of English during conferences with English-speaking representatives was that he wanted to concentrate on the subject in hand, and not on the language. Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler - even to the design of his cap. Originally he had a nice cap, but then he imitated the stationmaster type of cap preferred by Hitler.

She was a tigress surrounded by hamsters.

If Hitler had been a crook... We're very fortunate in the United States, we've never had a charismatic leader who weren't a gangster. Every one of them was a thug, or a robber, or something. Which is fine, then they don't cause a lot of trouble. If you get one who's honest, like Hitler, then you're in trouble - they just want power.

What he does in linguistics is exactly what he campaigns against in politics. He feeds off people. He doesn't allow anyone to disagree with him. --George Lakoff, April 27, 1995 [270]

Of late I have not given so free and full a power unto (Cromwell) as formerly I did, because I heard that he used his power so as in honour I could not avow him in it....for his expressions were sometimes against the nobility, that he hoped to live to see never a nobleman in England, and he loved such (and such) better than others because they did not love Lords. And he further expressed himself with contempt of the Assemberly of Divines...these he termed persecutors, and that they persecuted honester men than themselves.

It isn't a question of what you need. It never is. It's a question of what he needs. He needs to feel superior to you.

Why are you raising your voice to me, if not to command?

To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.

'In the end the tough guys are the truely effeminate ones, who need the weaklings as their victims in order not to admit that they are like them.'

The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.

'Who the hell do you think you are?'

'And now Austin: Austin, now you know. There is no price, I will not pay. There is no depth, that I will not stoop, to make your life on Earth, Austin, a total, complete, living HELL!'

I'll tell you, son, the minority got us out-numbered!

In 1815, the official French newspaper Le Moniteur, showed its readers how to follow Napoleon's progress: 'The brigand flees from the island of Elba'; 'The usurper arrives at Grenoble'; ' Napoleon enters Lyons'; 'The Emperor reaches Paris this evening'.

The buzzard told the monkey 'You're chokin' me Release your hold and I'll set you free' The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said 'Your story's touching but it sounds like a lie.'

...that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same...

He had been a shark trying to gnaw away at the shore, sharp-toothed and dangerous, yet unworthy of his adversary

You took sides!' So did you. The difference is that I sided with a man who was asking nothing more than to live with dignity... And you were siding with a woman who was using her connection with me as a way of raising herself above other people, which is foolish and self-destructive and I kept waiting for you to say something, for you to do anything to get [her] under control and you never did, not even when [he] was walking out on her because he couldn't take her psychotic hunger for control any longer

Niggas talk a lot of shit but that's after im gone/Cause they fear me in physical form let it be known

Try to offer me a deal, they told me if I squeal/move me, and my people, to a mansion in Brazil

While Zinoviev is in the majority he is for iron discipline.... When he is in the minority... he is against it.

There are no tyrants, there are only slaves.

The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

Let the meek inherit the earth - they have it coming to them.

No entanto a Inglaterra goza por algum tempo a com a certeza de ter de recomecar daqui a dez anos ou quinze anos; porque nem pode conquistar e anexar um vasto reino, que e grande como a Franca, nem pode consentir, colados a sua ilharga, uns poucos de milhoes de homens fanaticos, batalhadores e hostis. A , portanto, e debilita-los periodicamente, com uma invasao arruinadora. Sao as fortes necessidades de um grande imperio.

I have never accepted that Mengele believed he was doing serious medical work...He was exercising power. Major surgery was performed without anaesthetic. Once I witnessed a stomach operation - Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anaesthesia. It was horrifying.

Hess was an idealist, but the man who took his place, Bormann, was definitely a power-crazy, stingy man. Whereas Hess had the attitude of a worldly man, Bormann had the attitude of a newcomer. I believe that Bormann had no friends and that he was one of the most despised of men. The only reason he could hold the confidence of Hitler was that Hitler had been tremendously mistrusting during the last few years - a sickly mistrust.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

I've never thought much of Joe Nye's writings on soft power.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

We were weak. And the weak are being beaten.

How is this? Ought not the petitioner to speak first, and the conqueror to listen in silence?