C. S. Lewis Quotes

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Don’t you shit me George. You and I know who has the power in Alabama.

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

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

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I just want to conquer people and their souls.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.

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

Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

Power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, "Give, give!

Powerlessness also corrupts.

There is no more contemptible poison than power over one's fellow men.

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.