Saul Bellow Quotes

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

Power is always a corrupting influence. In this mythical time - let's call it medieval, feudal - people in power are dictatorial and don't want their positions of power to be threatened.

The bad leaders are the ones that push hard so they can gain, who brow beat us so that they can receive the benefit of our hard work, not so we can enjoy the success

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk.

POWER: The ability to make our fellow humans squirm, sweat and stammer on command. Often regarded as an aphrodisiac; actually a potent laxative that, whenever ingested by people in high places, causes everyone below to run for cover.

I think one should be antagonistic to one's underlings. It keeps them on their toes. ~Soi Fon

I think Trump is indicative of a larger problem. It existed way before him, it is our generation's issue that all over the world people are and have been suffering from despotic power figures who want nothing more to control than help the people they claim to represent. The difference being is a lot of people had not been paying much attention prior because it wasn't directly impacting them.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.

Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.

Catching Trump out not paying his taxes, treating his employees like garbage - none of this sticks to him because that actually reinforces his power, power over other people, which is this specific kind of power that he's selling.

Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.

I think the policy makers like the idea of being the boss. I mean people who like to boss other people around like to go into politics so they can become the boss.

Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality.

For anyone with the traits - of feeling himself victimized, of seeking to be the strongman who resolves everything, yet sees truth only through his own self and negates all other truth outside of it - is bound to become more malignant when he has power. Power then breeds an intensification of all this because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.

Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force.

He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others -- summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others.

I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of mind - an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow. If you can't force or are unwilling to force your people to follow you, with or without threats, you are not a leader.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

Ignorant power is a bane!

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.