Wendell Berry Quotes

One cannot hold power and not use it.

It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting - corruption and favoritism, mostly- endemic to the system.

It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

There's no way to use power for good.

Every morning, I shall concern myself anew about the boundary, Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No, And pressing forward honor reality. We cannot avoid, Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion, To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.

When we lack integrity, we use power to control. When we lead with integrity, we use power to bless.

Broken people misuse their power while people who have values don't use their powers in a way that harms.

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

Ethics and power are separate. Ethics and morality. I think life would be miserable if there weren't some kind of code that people operated by, but history is full of many, many people who have gotten power by very unethical means, and people who were very ethical, who get no power, people who have the most brilliant, lovely, wonderful, nice intentions and bring about horrible things in the world because they don't know how to play the power game.

We have perfected our weapons but failed to perfect the men who use them.

Authority is the assumption that someone else knows better than you.

As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.

Leadership is the intelligent use of power.

Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

The gross size of our talent inventories is less important than the net use of our talents?

Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who have talent.

I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.

Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.

No one can give us power. If we aren’t part of the process of taking it, we won’t be strong enough to use it.

For a thorough use of ice cream cones, buy two; eat one and drop the other.