98 Quotes About Power And Strength

In a world where challenges abound and resilience is key, exploring the concepts of power and strength can provide both inspiration and motivation. These profound forces are not just about physical might, but also encompass mental fortitude, emotional resilience, and the ability to influence and lead. The right quote can illuminate these aspects, offering wisdom that resonates deeply within us. Delve into this curated collection of 98 quotes, where renowned thinkers, leaders, and visionaries share their insights on harnessing power and embracing strength. Whether you seek to empower yourself or inspire others, these words offer a guiding light on your journey towards greater self-discovery and influence.

1. “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” - Toni Morrison

2. “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house” - Audre Lorde

3. “If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

4. “If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?” - George Deacon

5. “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” - Thomas Paine

6. “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

7. “You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.” - Giovanni Boccaccio

8. “Names have power.” - Rick Riordan

9. “What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ” - Leo Tolstoy

10. “As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.” - Boris Pasternak

11. “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.” - Emily Dickinson

12. “that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)” - Charles Bukowski

13. “Power,' as the sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda writes, 'enters the picture in two ways': the first entails constructing and legitimizing the moral system itself; the second, in enforcing it. In this view, 'deviants are those who simply do not have enough power to prevent others from defining them as such'.” - Shuli Barzilai

14. “It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.” - Neil Gaiman

15. “Great empires are not maintained by timidity.” - Tacitus

16. “We must transcend the illusion that money or power has any bearing on our worthiness as children of God.” - Steve Maraboli

17. “I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.” - Clive Barker

18. “Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

19. “I want to disabuse people of the idea that knowledge is power. Knowing how to get to Detroit is not the same thing as having the bus fare.” - Andrew Vachss

20. “It is the curse of the powerful to be blind to their own faults.” - Robert Fanney

21. “There are things you don't want to know you can do” - Robin McKinley

22. “The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.” - Wm. Paul Young

23. “Most of us, most of the time, act within plays the lines of which were written long ago, the images of which require recognition, not invention.” - Sidney W. Mintz

24. “Intelligence is power; it is the flame behind the spark of intrigue” - Tobsha Learner

25. “The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?” - Kim Edwards

26. “Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.” - Toni Morrison

27. “It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.” - Voltaire

28. “The main obstacle to further progress on the resource curse is China, and to a lesser extent India.” - George Soros

29. “In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be.” - Jean Baker Miller

30. “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

31. “The first step toward power is to accept reality” - Shannon McKenna

32. “Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.” - Mike Norton

33. “But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.” - Howard Zinn

34. “Your environment will eat your goals and plans for breakfast.” - Steve Pavlina

35. “They were way more interested in learning the alphabet or whatever than they were in learning how to rip a moose in half with their bare hands. Then make a helmet out of its skull. Then to use that helmet to help kill more moose. Collect the skull helmets. Combine. Assemble. Super moose skull helmet. Infinite power.” - Bratniss Everclean

36. “Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.” - Guillermo Del Toro

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

38. “The decide word is so powerful. It's amazing what you can do once you decide to do it.” - Lorii Myers

39. “Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.” - Marianne Williamson

40. “Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.” - Paul Collier

41. “Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.” - Derrick Bell

42. “People who avoid their fears also avoid their power.” - Timothy Roderick

43. “Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.” - Criss Jami

44. “There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.” - H. Rider Haggard

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

46. “Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.” - Henri Frédéric Amiel

47. “Os amigos do passado não serão mais que ténues recordações que não deixará interferir na sua ascensão. Ele já é meu.” - Susana Almeida

48. “To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.” - Criss Jami

49. “What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.” - Michael Ondaatje

50. “Love is an expression of power. We can use it to transform our world.” - Ericka Huggins

51. “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

52. “Do I look like I want to be eaten alive after sex?” - Nalini Singh

53. “There is a force that drives everything in this universe;you may call it anything you like, names that fit in tongue;when you're close to it, you have the power to do anything.” - Toba Beta

54. “That public men publish falsehoodsIs nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum. They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors, This republic, Europe, Asia. Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truthHunts in no pack. You are not CatulIus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatredS. Let boys want pleasure, and menStruggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.” - Robinson Jeffers

55. “Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.” - Iain Pears

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. “Like casinos, large corporate entities have studied the numbers and the ways in which people respond to them. These are not con tricks - they're not even necessarily against our direct interests, although sometimes they can be - but they are hacks for the human mind, ways of manipulating us into particular decisions we otherwise might not make. They are also, in a way, deliberate underminings of the core principle of the free market, which derives its legitimacy from the idea that informed self-interest on aggregate sets appropriate prices for items. The key word is 'informed'; the point of behavioural economics - or rather, of its somewhat buccaneering corporate applications - is to skew our perception of the purchase to the advantage of the company. The overall consequence of that is to tilt the construction of our society away from what it should be if we were making the rational decisions classical economics imagines we would, and towards something else.” - Nick Harkaway

62. “I believe in the immeasurable power of love; that true love can endure any circumstance and reach across any distance.” - Steve Maraboli

63. “Though it doesn’t feel like it, crisis places us front and center of desire, which is the force of power.” - S. Kelley Harrell

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

65. “A preoccupation with power - black power, student power, flower power, poor power, 'the power structure' - is the striking aspect of the American political scene at the moment. Oddly enough, obsession with power goes hand in hand with a fear of power. Some of the New Left groups that talk the toughest about power are extremely reluctant to see power operate in any institutional form; within their own organizations, they shun 'hierarchies' and formally structured relations of authority. What the preoccupation with power reflects, essentially, is a deep=seated, pervasive feeling of powerlessness.” - Carey McWilliams

66. “There is a force more powerful than steam and electricity: the will.” - Fernán Caballero

67. “Standing for truth is everything. Truth is power. Don't ever forget that.” - Terry Goodkind

68. “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

69. “What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.” - Irvine Welsh

70. “Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?” - David Mitchell

71. “I know that love is about power, too. Who gives, who takes. Who is willing to risk showing their true self.” - Alison Goodman

72. “Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.” - Charles Caleb Colton

73. “It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in't.” - William Shakespeare

74. “I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria.But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense.All friendships are negotiations of power.” - Holly Black

75. “Certain women because of their female power and seductiveness could bring destruction to a family.” - Margaret Way

76. “There is nothing more potent than thought. Deed follows word and word follows thought. And where the thought is mighty and pure, the result is mighty and pure.” - Ghandiji

77. “Men with power had the responsibility to know what was best, and they so rarely did.” - Beck Sherman

78. “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

79. “Absolute power doesn't corrupt, but rather, reveals character.” - Orrin Woodward

80. “[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.” - Michel Foucault

81. “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims—the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.” - Paul Hoffman

82. “...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

83. “When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn’t been one big decision.” - Albert Einstein

84. “I pull my power more tightly around me like a magic binky.” - Sam Cheever

85. “Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. Indeed, business all too often pulls the strings of government. Competing institutions-religion, the press, even the military-play subordinate roles in much of the world today. If a values-driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance.” - Ben Cohen

86. “What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.” - David Mitchell

87. “We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.” - Stewart L. Udall

88. “In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.” - Paul Hoffman

89. “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.

90. “The problem isn’t that I think so highly of myself. It is just that you think so little of yourself. Live life BIG, BOLD and OUT LOUD!” - Shannon L. Alder

91. “The heart is the door to our inner woman. The heart is the door to our inner world. The power chakra relates to the inner man. The power chakra relates to the outer world. Irrespective of if we are a man or a woman, the inner woman is the center of our consciousness.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

92. “To create reality, focus beyond the outcome, as if it has already happened.” - Gregg Braden

93. “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

94. “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

95. “Humans elect leaders on the basis of the promises they make. We [vampires] try to elect ours based solely on the strength of their character.” - Darren Shan

96. “the fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state it's definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises” - Martin Buber

97. “The ultimate male tradition is keeping women from sitting at the table of conversation regarding the balance of power between genders.” - Bryant McGill

98. “The strong survive.” - Ann Aguirre