Tom Hodgkinson Quotes

When you have real power you don't threaten. People know what your capabilities are.

I was lucky to become a Facebook board member in late 2008. Restricted stock units granted me at the time have increased many times in value.

We had the controlling shares but we weren’t in control.

Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none.

My role is really just to try to make sure that the voice of all shareholders and employees is heard - that no one is bullying their agenda, their choice of a CEO, or their selection of who should be the board members. Benchmark, I believe, has been pushing their agenda at the expense of those stakeholders.

Moreover, it is difficult to reconcile Hobbes’s distrust for the individual with his confidence in the altruistic nature of the individual or individuals who will oversee and control the Leviathan. Are not the latter also of flesh and blood? Hobbes seems to be saying that man’s nature cannot be trusted but the nature of a ruler or a ruling assembly of men can be trusted. How so?

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

The liberal state is neutral between capitalism and its critics until the critics look like they are winning.

When I’ve been unsuccessful, I’ve been controlled. When I’ve been successful, I’ve been in control.

He who has the bigger stick has the better chance of imposing his definitions of reality.

Great men help dazzle the people; after that, they dazzle themselves even more dangerously.

Power is sexy, not simply in its own right, but because it inspires self-confidence in its owner and a shiver of subservience on the part of those who approach it.

Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.

Power is neither good nor evil.

In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch.

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it.

Who owns a man, Durnik?” the blond young man asked sadly. “The one who rules him, or the one who pays him?

Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.

To the inexperienced it is a pleasant thing to court the favour of the great; an experienced man fears it.

You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

People with leverage have dominance over people with less leverage. In other words, just as humans gained advantages over animals by creating leveraged tools, similarly, humans who use these tools of leverage have more power over humans that do not. Saying it more simply, 'leverage is power'.

Oh yes, right—right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?

Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours.

Power educates the potentate.

Information is control.