Susan Sontag Quotes

What are the relationships between power and knowledge? There are two bad, short answers: 1. Knowledge provides an instrument that those in power can wield for their own ends. 2. A new body of knowledge brings into being a new class of people or institutions that can exercise a new kind of power.

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

I'm interested in power.

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.

There are no living beings who exert more power over others, pound for pound, than tiny babies and extremely thin moguls.

Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.

Politics is about power, and it is about group power.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

We lead them to believe that we are in complete control over every aspect of their lives.

Power comes through public persuasion.

Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth.

Politics is power, and communications is power,

The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.

It is the nature of government and of technology to establish control.

Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes you want, and that can be done by coercion, payment or attraction.

The word is control. That's my ultimate - to have control.

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.

When we speak of power, we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large.