In a world filled with challenges and opportunities, words have the power to uplift, motivate, and inspire us on our journeys. Whether you're seeking encouragement to pursue your dreams, strength to overcome obstacles, or a reminder of life's beauty, a powerful quote can often provide the spark you need. We've curated a collection of 140 inspirational quotes that capture the essence of human resilience and potential. From timeless wisdom to contemporary insights, these quotes serve as a beacon of hope and a source of motivation, reminding us of the power within and the possibilities ahead. Let these words inspire your thoughts, energize your spirit, and accompany you on your path to greatness.
1. “I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?” - Elizabeth Gilbert
2. “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” - Toni Morrison
3. “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house” - Audre Lorde
4. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.” - C.S. Lewis
5. “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
6. “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” - Elie Wiesel
7. “Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” - Robert A. Heinlein
8. “Wissenschaft ist Macht.” - Roger Bacon
9. “Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. “But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
11. “But… all I said was that I was scared." After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind." She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons." You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later." She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power." I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…" Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself.” - Jim Butcher
12. “Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth -- and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert G. Ingersoll because he used his matchless power for the good of man.{Darrow's eulogy for Ingersoll at his funeral}” - Clarence Darrow
13. “They think the government shows people everything —how to work, study, eat, sleep and that’s it. They are afraid of change. They do not understand that if you want to do something, you should do it. You are free, people, free!” - Anton Krotov
14. “And so even the righteous heart is besieged by the blinding light of false knowledge. Falsity is like an ocean that presses around solitary moments of truth, treatening to overwhelm or blind the seekers of knowledge, to eradicate them in an instant of self-deceiving brilliance.Knowledge is power; it guards our souls - guard it well.” - C.S. Goto
15. “When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. (...) The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. (...) My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. (...) I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” - C.S. Lewis
16. “Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
17. “Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.” - Michel Foucault
18. “Some people still think knowledge is power.” - Chuck Palahniuk
19. “When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.” - Brian Ruckley
20. “Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.” - Tina Brown
21. “By the power of Steven Wright's Beard!” - Craig Ferguson
22. “I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.” - Niccolo Machiavelli
23. “The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.” - Wm. Paul Young
24. “What if one out of every three multinational corporation CEO's were raped every year? Don't you think that would raise a kind of ruckus?” - Inga Muscio
25. “If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately in the world then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel know and value deeply.” - Judith Plaskow
26. “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
27. “No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.” - Jeremy Bentham
28. “The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back.” - Honoré de Balzac
29. “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
30. “It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.” - Otto von Bismarck
31. “Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.” - Toni Morrison
32. “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
33. “A lion may die of an ass's kick.” - Robert Browning
34. “You gain power by pretending to be weak.” - Chuck Palahniuk
35. “It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.” - George Soros
36. “In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.” - Timothy B. Tyson
37. “Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” - Beth Revis
38. “Anger can be managed to becomeemotional content that raises power.” - Toba Beta
39. “Scientia potentia est.Knowledge is power.” - Thomas Hobbes
40. “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
41. “You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.” - Mikhail Bulgakov
42. “Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.” - bell hooks
43. “That speaking the words, even if true, had little power to change the inevitable or even make him feel much better.” - Nicholas Sparks
44. “Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.” - Mike Norton
45. “Calmness is the cradle of power.” - J.G. Holland
46. “Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?” - Robert Louis Stevenson
47. “If you want to fight hell and the power of darkness that seek to destroy the hearts of our daughters, I know a type of spiritual warfare that creates value in a daughter's spirit. It is called "Taking your Daughter out for tea" or "Going to Her Soccer Game", and it works in direct opposition to the agenda of hell and darkness that wants to destroy their lives.” - Jim Anderson
48. “And what exactly do you think this proves?" he spits. "You've got power, but you don't know what to do with it." VIOLA "Looks like I'm doing fine," I say.” - Patrick Ness
49. “The worship of power is an old religion.” - George Santayana
50. “It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.” - Alain De Botton
51. “My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.” - Peter S. Beagle
52. “You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.” - Wallace Stegner
53. “All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.” - Vera Nazarian
54. “In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.” - Joss Whedon
55. “He offered her power, money, status...a giant prison, all in exchange for only...her soul.” - Jamie Weise
56. “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
57. “Really? And what curse befalls the Adams of the world?"Ann opens her mouth and, presumably thinking of nothing to say, closes it again. It is Felicity who answers, eyes steely. "They are weak to temptation. And we are their temptresses.” - Libba Bray
58. “Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” - Criss Jami
59. “I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments.” - Anne Rice
60. “Kötü, hemen hemen her defasında, niçin 'iyi'den daha güçlü olarak ortaya çıkıyor ?” - Chingiz Aitmatov
61. “There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.” - H. Rider Haggard
62. “The world is a much more beautiful and incredible place than you think, and each of us has a great deal of power to make it more so.” - Oie Osterkamp
63. “It's always good to be underestimated.” - Melissa de la Cruz
64. “Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.” - Robert Fulghum
65. “Watching my father plan and strategize for the resistance has taught me about trust.” She leaned forward. “Personal trust is very different from political trust, my lady. The first thrives on faith. The second requires proof, whether it be upfront or covert.” Awkwardly, she patted my hand. “His Majesty has always been a powerful man. Perhaps he has never had to distinguish between the two.” - Alison Goodman
66. “Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.” - Barbara W. Tuchman
67. “Os amigos do passado não serão mais que ténues recordações que não deixará interferir na sua ascensão. Ele já é meu.” - Susana Almeida
68. “Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.” - H.G. Wells
69. “If fucking up is power, I should be the Hulk by now.” - Richard Kadrey
70. “To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.” - Criss Jami
71. “Love is an expression of power. We can use it to transform our world.” - Ericka Huggins
72. “There is no peace without power.” - Toba Beta
73. “There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.” - Michael Connelly
74. “All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.” - Clive James
75. “In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)” - Saul Bellow
76. “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” - George Orwell
77. “Do not dilute the truth of your potential. We often convince ourselves that we cannot change, that we cannot overcome the circumstances of our lives. That is simply not true. You have been blessed with immeasurable power to make positive changes in your life. But you can't just wish it, you can't just hope it, you can't just want it... you have to LIVE it, BE it, DO it.” - Steve Maraboli
78. “She looked into Kirsten's eyes and wondered how it is that a soldier fights and a savior suffers, but a woman, in lying down, rules everything.” - Rebecca Coleman
79. “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” - Raymond Lindquist
80. “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
81. “Experience has taught me the power of trophies. You may have every knick-knack and useless contraption ever devised, but while they weigh you down, a simple trophy can go a long, long way.” - Tahir Shah
82. “100% of a Guru’s marketing plan depends on you holding the belief that you are not enough; that you were created less equipped than necessary to fulfill your purpose. What if you let go of that belief and connected with the truth of your innate power to change and shape your life? You ARE enough. You CAN change and shape your own life. Anyone who tells you different is simply lying. Your life has immeasurable potentiality for greatness; act accordingly.” - Steve Maraboli
83. “Mastering the art of seduction gives one a great power, and like any power, it's to be wielded with responsibility; a man who wields the art of seduction without a sense of responsibility and restraint is a walking proximity bomb of viral epidemics, needless procreation, heartbroken families, and shattered dreams.” - Mike Norton
84. “democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one’s self.” - Sheldon S. Wolin
85. “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” - Oliver Cromwell
86. “Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.” - Brandon Sanderson
87. “We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.” - Junot Diaz
88. “The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender.” - William Booth
89. “Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.” - A.J.P. Taylor
90. “I don't wear armor. I don't carry weapons. An emperor needs only his imagination.” - Lionel Suggs
91. “But I could control these flames. It was an irresistible urge, one that I didn’t want to ignore. - Aurora” - Candace Knoebel
92. “No one is charismatic. Someone becomes charismatic in history, socially. The question for me is once again the problem of humility. If the leader discovers that he is becoming charismatic not because of his or her qualities but because mainly he or she is being able to express the expectations of a great mass of people, then he or she is much more of a translator of the aspirations and dreams of the people, instead of being the creator of the dreams. In expressing the dreams, he or she is recreating these dreams. If he or she is humble, I think that the danger of power would diminish.” - Myles Horton
93. “One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefits. Here is the Achilles’ heel of armies, police and bureaucracies.” - Frank Herbert
94. “There is a force more powerful than steam and electricity: the will.” - Fernán Caballero
95. “How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?” - H. Rider Haggard
96. “I would be bored to death if I didn't control a country--Gin” - Shinjo Mayu
97. “I have always felt that fear possesses such great power, enough to paralyze and quake an individual. Pondering this, I realized that the source of fear's power comes from within me. So, I ask myself, does that not make me the powerful one?” - Richelle E. Goodrich
98. “Standing for truth is everything. Truth is power. Don't ever forget that.” - Terry Goodkind
99. “Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.” - Neal Shusterman
100. “He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.” - Émile Zola
101. “How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?“Winston thought. “By making him suffer”, he said.“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 is 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. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.” - George Orwell
102. “So you come soon to power, but you have merely inherited the crisis and yours is the profit of cancer.” - Norman Mailer
103. “Wrote my way out of the hood...thought my way out of poverty! Don't tell me that knowledge isn't power. Education changes everything.” - Brandi L. Bates
104. “I realize the simple truth is that power isn’t control at all- power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” - Beth Revis
105. “Power is the best shield that the disordered personality can conceive against being revealed as the laughing stock he secretly suspects himself to be.” - William Donaldson
106. “Of course, it was impossible, in this company, not to think about balances of power. Raffin and Bann glanced at each other now and then, sharing silent agreement, teasing each other, or just resting their eyes on each other, as if each man was a comfortable resting place for the other. Prince Raffin, heir to the Middluns throne; Bann, who had no title, no fortune. How she longed to ask them questions that were too nosy for asking, even by her standards. How did they balance money matters? How did they make decisions? How did Bann cope with the expectation that Raffin marry and produce heirs? If Randa knew the truth about his son, would Bann be in danger? Did Bann ever resent Raffin’s wealth and importance? What was the balance of power in their bed?” - Kristin Cashore
107. “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
108. “I tell you, money can't build your spire for you. Build it of gold and it would simply sink deeper.” - William Golding
109. “When you become the image of your own imagination, it's the most powerful thing you could ever do.” - Rupaul
110. “When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.” - Maggie Stiefvater
111. “He wanted to write someone and demand a refund on his dark side which clearly ought to have irresistible magical power but had turned out to be defective.” - Eliezer Yudkowsky
112. “Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.” - Philip G. Zimbardo
113. “Start your day with and in prayer. Communicate with the Lord and listen for instructions. Hooking up, plugging into, and connecting to the POWER SOURCE each day will keep power outages and disconnections away!” - Anita R. Sneed-Carter
114. “Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge.” - Dejan Stojanovic
115. “Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
116. “The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time—” - Kim Stanley Robinson
117. “In Washington...the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality” - Henry Kissinger
118. “...Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze. “I understand,” she said. It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.” - Paul Hoffman
119. “Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow.” - William Shakespeare
120. “Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies.” - Roman Payne
121. “Many are called, few are chosen.” - Paul Hoffman
122. “He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.” - Patrick Suskind
123. “It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten
124. “I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.” - Whitney M. Young Jr.
125. “This myth he'd made out of intricate movements and imagination, out of moonlight and love, out of prayers older than Adam, and gray cliffs and crimson shadows, laments and rivers of martyrs - what had it come to at last? When the waves receded, the shores of Time would spread out there clean, empty, shining with infinite grains of memory and little else.” - Frank Herbert
126. “Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.” - Alexander Berkman
127. “What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former.” - Northrop Frye
128. “You make the world come alive. You make the world colorful. You are the inspiration behind all that happens. You are the pillar of strength to many around you, the centrifugal force of your own little world, called family. I love being a women and celebrate being one everyday, hope you all do too!! And to all those who battle their various circumstances, the hurdles, the sacrifices and the compromises they make, wish them all inner strength! Happy Women's Day!” - Deeba Salim Irfan
129. “It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it.” - Jean Baudrillard
130. “A scoundrel is an evil heliotrope turning always in the direction of the most powerful.” - Umberto Eco
131. “The world is full of injustice, and those who profit by injustice are in a position to administer rewards and punishments. The rewards go to those who invent ingenious justifications for inequality, the punishments to those who try to remedy it.” - Bertrand Russell
132. “He probably wanted real power, the power to direct one's environment towards a harmonious end, and not fictitious power, the power to order and be obeyed; and he must have known that he had not been able to exercise real power over Rome. It would have been easier for him if what we were told when we were young was true, and that the decay of Rome was due to immorality. Life, however, is never as simple as that, and human beings rarely so potent. There is so little difference between the extent to which any large number of people indulge in sexual intercourse, when they indulge in it without inhibitions and when they indulge in it with inhibitions, that it cannot often be a determining factor in history. The exceptional person may be an ascetic or a debauchee, but the average man finds celibacy and sexual excess equally difficult. All we know of Roman immorality teaches us that absolute power is a poison, and that the Romans, being fundamentally an inartistic people, had a taste for pornography which they often gratified in the description of individuals and families on which that poison had worked.” - Rebecca West
133. “But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2).” - James K.A. Smith
134. “I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of the State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.” - C.S. Lewis
135. “The thing about money is," said Ben, "you can't be polite to it. Leave something suspicious to say, and it'll say it...Leave something greedy to say, and it'll say it...Leave something scary to say, and it'll say it."--"Money Talks” - Kurt Vonnegut
136. “There is a cruelty that lurks in some men’s souls which is only released when they have other men in their power.” - Morgan Llywelyn
137. “A turmoil of winds rushed around him, spiraling up in to the air: he was thinking.” - Heather James
138. “True freedom and power only comes when one is free of attachments.” - Bryant McGill
139. “Thus it is said:The path into the light seems dark,the path forward seems to go back,the direct path seems long,true power seems weak,true purity seems tarnished,true steadfastness seems changeable,true clarity seems obscure,the greatest are seems unsophisticated,the greatest love seems indifferent,the greatest wisdom seems childish.The Tao is nowhere to be found.Yet it nourishes and completes all things.” - Lao Tzu
140. “Privileged groups work for greater power consolidation through favoritism.” - Bryant McGill
