Theodore Dreiser Quotes

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

Look at the forces against me. They don't want me out. They're afraid I'll cause trouble if I get out.

The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority!

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

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

Wild beasts hate nets, and people hate their superiors.

I have plumbed the depth of human cowardice and I realized that there is only one way to be right, and that is to be in power.

Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.

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

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

I think there is an instinct out there to rid us of our masters.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

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

When I was in jail, I was a lot of people's favorite person. I practically ran the jail. I had more freedom than the police.

Well I have a microphone and you don't so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

The radios are going to dictate. That's another fight. That's another story there. I wish they just let it be.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

Do I let a group of power-mongering men with short penises tell me what to do?

A man is the prisoner of his power.

You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, suffer or triumph, and be the anvil or the hammer.

The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.