Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes

Now Herod was an active man, and soon found proper materials for his active spirit to work upon.

A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.

Men are such power-seeking creatures, and they usually kill people to get to the throne.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

'House Of Cards' with Kevin Spacey - I love how it portrays humans in power as just like the rest of us - but even worse.

The man whom events had elevated to the position of dictator tirelessly must have been aspiring to power himself, energetically pushing aside and crushing ruthlessly all who stood in his way

Theodore betrays his friends for his own ambition.

Such is human nature, in the gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition, and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.

To plunder, to lie, to show your ass, are the three essentials for climbing high.

Under every stone lurks a politician

He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers, is the decay of the whole age.

If you do not know how to lie, cheat and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.

Feelings of marginalization and cries of separation are symptomatic of countries where rulers find power sweet and intoxicating, where power is coveted, and when acquired, painstakingly guarded.

A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Most governments are designed for the purposes of oppression and personal ambition.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

... a tissue of machinations against the liberties of the country.

But what will not ambition and revenge descend to?

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

He who appears to command people but in fact accommodates himself to wrath and ambition and pleasure, … will not know how to dispose of the power

In a free government, the few, finding their schemes and views of interest borne down by the many, to gain the power they cannot constitutionally obtain, always endeavor to get it by cunning and corruption, conscious at the same time that usurpation, when once begun, the safety of the usurper consists only in grasping the whole.