"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them."
Pablo Picasso
70 Top-Notch Quotes about Power
"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger
(c. 3 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was later forced to commit suicide for complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate this last of the Julio-Claudian emperors; however, he may have been innocent.
"Power doesn't corrupt man; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."
George Bernard Shaw
(26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama
and he wrote more than 60 plays.
"You see what power is - holding someone's else fear in your hand and showing it to them."
Amy Tan
(born February 19, 1952) is a Chinese American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, became a commercially successful film. The book has been translated into 35 languages.
"It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable."
Eric Hoffer
(July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan.
"Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it."
James Abram Garfield
(November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death on September 19, 1881, a brief 200 days in office.
"The secret of all power is- save your force. If you want high pressure you must choke off waste."
Joseph P. Farrell
(-) is a theologian, scholar on the East–West Schism and the author of a number of books on alternative history, Pseudohistory, historical revisionism, Pseudoarchaeology, physics, and science.
"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public."
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
(November 20, 1925 – June 5, 1968) also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician,
a Democratic Senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism, he was a younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and acted as one of his advisers during his presidency.
"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom."
Stephen Vincent Bené
(July 22, 1898 – March 13, 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist.
"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength."
Henry Ward Beecher
(June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was a prominent, Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century. An 1875 adultery trial in which he was accused of having an affair with a married woman was one of the most notorious American
trials of the 19th century.
"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks."
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr.
(born April 19, 1931) is a software engineer and computer scientist, best-known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the OS/360 software support package.
