63 Powerful Quotes

In today's fast-paced world, a few words of wisdom can often provide the motivation and perspective needed to navigate life's challenges. Whether you’re seeking inspiration, comfort, or a spark of creativity, quotes have the extraordinary power to distill complex thoughts into simple, resonant messages. In this post, you'll find a carefully curated collection of the top 63 powerful quotes from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries across history. These timeless words are sure to uplift your spirit and encourage you to push forward, no matter where you are on your journey.

1. “You may be a lady but you are still the man!” - Lynda Barry

2. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” - Frederick Douglass

3. “You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we're not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.” - LOUISE L. HAY

4. “Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.” - Martha Grimes

5. “Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely. ” - Louise Labé

6. “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

7. “If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?” - Harry Shearer

8. “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

9. “Ipsa scientia potestas est.Knowledge itself is power.” - Francis Bacon

10. “Don't you know no one can escapethe power of creatures reaching outwith breath alone?” - Marina Tsvetaeva

11. “Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.” - Carl Sagan

12. “Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.” - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

13. “Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.” - Jim Butcher

14. “What was the point in satin and lace if it didn't make a man struggle to speak?” - Alexandra Ivy

15. “A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.” - Georges Clemenceau

16. “As Atwood concludes after a random and informal sampling, men and women differ markedly in the 'scope of their threatenability': 'Why do men feel threatened by woman?' I asked a male friend of mine....'[M]en are bigger, most of the time...and they have on the average a lot more money and power.' 'They're afraid women will laugh at them,' he said. 'Undercut their world view.' Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, 'Why do women feel threatened by men?' 'They're afraid of being killed,' they said'.” - Shuli Barzilai

17. “After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.” - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

18. “If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

19. “The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

20. “There is power and there is power, my dear. My power can be vast, in the right places.” - Tamora Pierce

21. “One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!” - Anne Rice

22. “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

23. “Understanding the beauty of our humanity unlocks the power of our spirituality.” - Steve Maraboli

24. “Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.” - Michel Foucault

25. “[P]ower is at its most potent when it can operate silently.” - J.A. Sharpe

26. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, alistening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, allof which have the potential to turn a life around.” - Leo F. Buscaglia

27. “More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

28. “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

29. “You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.” - Leymah Gbowee

30. “Power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.” - Leo Tolstoy

31. “I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.” - Vera Nazarian

32. “While fear depletes power, faith gives wings for the soul’s elevation.” - T.F. Hodge

33. “Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.” - James Richardson

34. “It's always good to be underestimated.” - Melissa de la Cruz

35. “This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.” - G.K. Chesterton

36. “Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.” - Aberjhani

37. “Remember that the choices you make, and the reasons you make them, shape your destiny. Remember your free will...And remember, what the True One has made is supposed to bring balance and unity, not anger, fear or revenge. Do not fear, what is yours to use. Only beware the ends to which it is turned, and know the means will truly determine the outcome.” - Derek Donais

38. “There is no peace without power.” - Toba Beta

39. “I hate what you represent."... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.” - Jim Butcher

40. “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

41. “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

42. “Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.” - J. P. Vinluca

43. “Power resides where men believe it resides. A very small man can cast a very large shadow.” - George R.R. Martin

44. “I cant take it like this much longer, Milt," Karen said muffledly into the big CKC shirt with its male smell, allowing herself the luxury of letting the bars all the way down for once, enjoying for just this moment the eternal degradation of being a woman."I cant take it much longer," she whimpered, tasting it, the eternally caught and held hard in the grasp of some man, the forever humiliated heavy weight it was impossible to squirm out from under, the forever helpless except for the mercy of him who always takes what he wants without any, and that all women learn instinctively not to expect [...] That was all they wanted. That was all any of them wanted. You give them the greatest thing you possess, the most intimate secret, and they --- just take it. Well, let them have it. Let them all have some of it. Let them root and rut and rowel, as if it was no more important than that why were they all so anxious to keep it away from each other?” - James Jones

45. “He was demanding. He always would be. But sometimes, he was so vulnerable and she realized she had power in the relationship as well. She hadn’t expected that. He was as vulnerable to her as she was to him. He just acted arrogant and bossy, but deep down, where it counted, he didn’t want to lose her either.” - Christine Feehan

46. “But I could control these flames. It was an irresistible urge, one that I didn’t want to ignore. - Aurora” - Candace Knoebel

47. “Change is the most beneficial power available to you, simply change the things you don't like, replacing them with your true desires.” - Steven Redhead

48. “Taking what is, then making it into what it can be through the power of creation that we all possess.” - Steven Redhead

49. “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

50. “There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve.” - Lidia Yuknavitch

51. “It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42” - Alaa Al Aswany

52. “Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.” - Robert McKee

53. “But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

54. “When he is most powerful, nothing does he become.” - Dejan Stojanovic

55. “To be sure, I had, and have, spent the better part of my post-college life growing up in the public eye, with my shameful warts, big and ugly, looming there for the world to see; and it has been a mighty battle trying to be a man, a Black man, a human being, a responsible and consistent human being, as I have interfaced with my past and with my personal demons, with friends and lovers, with enemies and haters. As Tupac Shakur once famously said to me, “There is no placed called careful.” On the one hand, Tupac was right: There is not much room for error in America if you are a Black male in a society ostensibly bent on profiling your every move, eager to capitalize on your falling into this or that trap, particularly keen to swoop down on your self-inflicted mishaps. But by the same token, Tupac was wrong: There can be a place called careful, once one becomes aware of the world one lives in, its potential, its limitations, and if one is willing to struggle to create a new model, some new and alternative space outside and away from the larger universe, where one can be free enough to comprehend that even if the world seems aligned against you, you do not have to give the world the rope to hang you with.” - Kevin Powell

56. “It is strange how love is a source for power––can spur the desire to fight to the death, or to fight back from something that seems like death for long enough to write a coherent note––but also of weakness.” - Beth Fantaskey

57. “The evil queen was stupid to play Snow White's game. There's an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun.” - Chuck Palahniuk

58. “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.

59. “During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and brothers, women were given the vote, and young people were allowed to enjoy those innocent pleasures of which the old, in the name of morality, always wish to rob them. The war being won, the victors set to work to deprive their tools of advantages temporarily conceded.” - Bertrand Russell

60. “You can do anything and smash anything in the world with a kopeck.” - Nikolai Gogol

61. “I value my ownindependence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than thatof having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturingme, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He mightbe the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel andresent his interference...” - Elizabeth Gaskell

62. “If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.” - C.S. Lewis

63. “Words have power. The power to soothe. The power to skewer someone through the heart. The power to render someone speechless.” - Ellen Hopkins