Exercise of Power Quotes

Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

The dominance of the conservatives during forty years created a unique political situation. It meant the preponderance of the executive branch of government over the legislative and tended to centralize power in the hands of a few. These few people in the seat of power began to be closely linked up with the equally small number of people controlling the business enterprises of the country. While, therefore, Japan as a nation was making a steady advance on the Asiatic mainland and in the world at large, the political conscience of the people itself was not given a needed chance to express itself. It gradually created an atmosphere of lamentable indifference to politics on the part of the majority of the people. They were not given suffrage to express themselves and even those few who had votes realized that the exercise of their power did not mean much in formulating the country's policy.

Power always brings with it responsibility.

We should not be content to say that power has a need for such-and-such a discovery, such-and-such a form of knowledge, but we should add that the exercise of power itself creates and causes to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of information. ... The exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power. ... It is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power.

Sovereignty is not given, it is taken.

The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.

As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action.

Do you want power over something? Be more nearly real than it.

The demand for liberty is a demand for power, either for possession of powers of action not already possessed or for retention and expansion of powers already possessed.

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.

For one to grasp, whatever be his object, sov'reign power ... is an act of perilous presumption.

It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?

As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

The state or global forms of power that seek to protect populations considered in danger may well extend their own power through those acts of protection.

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say it! virtue even has need of limits.

And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth; Four things greater than all things are Women and Horses and Power and War.

Sovereignty and the right to rule cannot be conferred on anyone no matter who ... as a result of an academic discussion. Sovereignty is acquired by force and power and violence.

Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.

My interest is in power. How power works.

Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.

He hath no power that hath not power to use.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.