Alfred Kazin Quotes

All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural superiority.

To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.

The people who exercise the power are not always the same people over whom it is exercised.

To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority.

I was not a queen bee, ever.

The people rate strength before everything.

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

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

I was allowed to ring the bell for five minutes until everyone was in assembly. It was the beginning of power.

Power tires only those who do not have it.

Wealth and power don't go together. Power cannot be brokered. To me, power is responsibility.

People desire power. I don't know why they want it so. It seems to me it implies a hugely superior intellect which separates them from most of the populace.

God blesses us all with different views and perspectives and levels of influence and power.

Like most animals, we're wired to associate height with power.

Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.

The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.

They who possess the prince possess the laws.

Men love power.

Kings need the company of the intelligent far more than the intelligent need the company of kings.

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

…property in fact generally confers power, though the possessor of it may not have much more wit than a mole or a mugwash…

You must be a power on earth, and must therefore accept all the consequences of this position

The central factor in most human beings is power. Politics is the manifestation of the quest for power.

The whole conversation of my work has to do with power and who has it.