Quotes
Quotes about Power
Dear to us are those who love us. . . but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit . . .
Written about Washington after his death by another of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson: His mind was great and powerful ... as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.... Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw doubt, but, when once decided, going through his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known.... He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good and a great man ... On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect ... it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great....
The new constitution established a president with powers unheard of in the republican United States. Some even wanted him to be king, a thought that GW found ludicrous: What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & fallacious!
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
Valor consists in the power of self recovery.
Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion.
Victory; a matter of staying power.
If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.
I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
If there's a power above us, (and that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works) he must delight in virtue.
Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.
The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
The power of imagination created the illusion that my vision went much farther than the naked eye could actually see.
Visualization and belief in a pattern of reality, Activates the creative power of Realization.
In every community there is work to be done. In every nation there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it.
... the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation . . . an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.... The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
It was necessary for us to discover greater powers of destruction than our enemies. We did. But after every war we have followed through with a new rise in our standard of living by the application of war-taught knowledge for the benefit of the world. It will be the same with the atomic bomb principles.
The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.
That name was a power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone amid the storm of war, a beacon light to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed too like a meteor to repel her foes.
Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.
Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginnings of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.
You often ask me, Priscus, what sort of person I should be, if I were to become suddenly rich and powerful. Who can determine what would be his future conduct? Tell me, if you were to become a lion, what sort of a lion would you be?
