Cai Guo-Qiang Quotes

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.

Power is seductive.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

I like power and I like to use it.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power.

It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils.

Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Whatever my aims and agendas were, I never asked for power.

Power is like a drug. The more you use it, the larger doses you need.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it.

Men love power.

You want power because it's an opportunity.

Power is insinuating. Few men are satisfied with less power than they are able to procure.

Never doubt what small men will do for great power.

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

I'm Machiavelli's offspring, I'm the king of New York, king of the coast, one hand, I juggle them both.