Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Quotes

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

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.

If I wanted, I could have ruled half of Bombay.

Makers of empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones.

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

Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force.

Power never takes a back step—only in the face of more power.

Smash the lot of them …. Show them the fist. Prove yourself a sovereign. You are the autocrat and they should not dare to forget it.

There will be no place that the sun will shine that will not be ours.

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

When it comes to power, we know I got power, and we know I can wrestle.

FAUSTUS. Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. By him I'll be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge thorough the moving air, To pass the ocean with a band of men; I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore, And make that country continent to Spain, And both contributory to my crown: The Emperor shall not live but by my leave, Nor any potentate of Germany. Now that I have obtain'd what I desir'd, I'll live in speculation of this art, Till Mephistophilis return again.

Conquest is easy. Control is not.

All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.

To come under siege was the inevitable fate of power.

I'm satisfied as long as I dominate.

Any conqueror in human history has always been ultimately someone who exists purely for the expansion of their own ego, through amounting more.

Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

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

Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.

The brave man, indeed, calls himself lord of the land, through his iron, through his blood.

Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.