Michael Caine Quotes

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.

When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.

One either imposes one's ideas or one is imposed on.

Authority is not a quality one person 'has', in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.

Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller.

I'm not used to saying no to this man on any level.

What I'd really like to control is not machines, but people.

He who demands does not command.

To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.

It's time to discuss what it's going to take to get you beneath me"-GC

Being powerful is so much more interesting than being beautiful.

Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge.

If you are to stay in the good graces of the powerful, you had best, however unobtrusively, please the servants of the powerful.

She might not know what your routine is, but I do,” I said softly. “So put the lantern down. You’re not burning me yet, and we both know it.” “What’s she saying?” Sarah demanded, hobbling over. His white brows drew together, and I allowed a little smile to play on my lips. “Awfully bossy with you, isn’t she? Then again, it makes sense. She’s got the pants on, and you’re the one in the dress.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

The people rate strength before everything.

Pierre Bordieu was right: "The all powerful is he who does not wait but makes others wait. Absolute power is the power to make oneself unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to place them in total uncertainty by offering no scope for their capacity to predict."

We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

Apart from any other basis which might justify a superiority, education, as a power, raised him who possessed it over the weak, who lacked it, and the educated man counted in his circle, however large or small it was, as the mighty, the powerful, the imposing one: for he was an authority.

Even with a round table, some people always seem able to sit at the head of it.

Culture follows power.

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