Power

"More power than any good man should want, and more power than any other kind of man ought to have."

"Every institution which grapples with the problem of molding recalcitrant material into a fairer shape—and nothing is more recalcitrant than the passions and interests of men—runs the risk of being defeated by its material. And since the institution which proposes the ideal is itself served by fallible human beings, the danger is not only that the experiment may fail but that the artists themselves, wrestling with such insidious substances as power, responsibility, and material goods, may themselves be caught by these powerful instincts, may appropriate to themselves the power they sought to tame or the riches they had hoped to divert to a nobler cause."

"So long as a man’s power, that is, his capacity to realize what he has in mind, is bound to the goal, to the work, to the calling, it is, considered in itself, neither good nor evil, it is only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself."

". . . How stern And desolate a tract is this wide world! How withered all the buds of natural good! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power!"

"There are clear and predictable consequences for the world if human beings continue to rape the earth and plunder its resources; to exploit, oppress, and dominate the weak and the poor for the sake of greed and the hunger for power; to depend on ever-rising levels of violence and ever more lethal instruments of death and destruction in order to secure positions of power and privilege."

"The analysis [of power] should not attempt to consider power from its internal point of view and...should refrain from posing the labyrinthine and unanswerable question: Who then has power and what has he in mind? What is the aim of someone who possesses power? Instead, it is a case of studying power at the point where its intention, if it has one, is completely invested in its real and effective practices."

"The impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity."

"Cupido dominandi cunctis affectibus flagrantior est."

"When a man in power asks for time to consider anything, it is generally in order that he may be able to consult his immediate inferior, without whose sanction he dares not assent to anything."

"The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique."

"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force."

"Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. … If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial."