Quotes to inspire and reflect

True power and true politeness are above vanity.

It is natural for men to want power. But to seek power actively takes a temperament baffling to both the simple and the wise. The simple cannot fathom how any man would dare presume to prevail, while the wise are amazed that any reasonable man would want the world, assuming he could get it.

The eagle suffers little birds to sing.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, / Pollutes whate’er it touches.

Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

The property of power is to protect.

There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one’s self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

[Wjhoever is the cause of another becoming powerful, is ruined himself; for that power is produced by him either through craft or force; and both of these are suspected by the one who has been raised to power.

Deny a strong man his due, and he will take all he can get.

To ask for power is forcing uphill a stone which after all rolls back again from the summit and seeks in headlong haste the levels of the plain.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.

Oh, it is vile for a man, if he be noble, / And when he has won to the heights of power, / To put on new manners for old and change / His countenance.

Power gives no purchase / to the hand, it will not hold, soon perishes, / and greatness goes.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events,'and strong with their strength.

Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, 1 self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

When the reality of power has been surrendered, it’s playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it; the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.

To be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

We can t do without dominating others or being served. ... Even the man on the bottom rung still has his wife, or his child. If he’s a bachelor, his dog. The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.

The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.

For the mighty even to give way is grace.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism.

There is no evidence to support the belief that [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev ever questioned

Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone’s head.

Poverty with joy isn’t poverty at all. The poor man is not one who has little, but one who hankers after more.

The more humanity owes him [the poor man], the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favours.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty.

In a change of government, the poor change nothing beyond the change of their master.

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure—above all, it means loneliness.

We have two American flags always; one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

Seldom do people discern / Eloquence under a threadbare cloak.

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Of the woes / Of unhappy poverty, none is more difficult to bear/Than that it heaps men with ridicule.

This growing poverty in the midst of growing population constitutes a permanent menace to peace. And not only to peace, but also to democratic institutions and personal liberty. For overpopulation is not compatible with freedom.

Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.

Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace, / Ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues.

Poor men’s reasons are not heard.

Is there not yet oppression in the country? A starving of men and pampering of dogs?

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.