Relative Power Quotes

In war, moral factors acount for three quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one quarter.

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

They are big fish in a small pond.

The United States emerged from the Cold War with unprecedented absolute and relative power. It was truly first among unequals.

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age, was bearing the signs of what is now very visible: the emergence of a multipolar world.

Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?

..Our level of influence is not the same with everyone.

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.

We humans are a minority of giants stumbling around in a world of little things.

Victory or defeat in interstate war depends on numerous factors, but what is ultimately decisive is the relative amount of economic resources at a government's disposal.

The comparative strength of each piece depends entirely on circumstance; their movements are so different that it is essentially impossible to effectively compare them on anything other than a case-by-case basis.

What is equality of rights between a giant and a dwarf?

Cooperation requires a certain degree of trust between states. The threshold of trust required for cooperation depends on a set of variables including a state's relative power and costs of conflict…. conflict between trustworthy states is possible, when we see conflict it is a sign that one or both of the states are likely to be untrustworthy.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

Politics is not like a teeter totter. Just because one party goes down, it does not mean that they other party goes up.

The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.

He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.

The relative lack of power of certain minority groups, and the fear they're feeling in the wake of Donald Trump's election, is something I think we really need to take a look at.

The difference between a pebble and a mountain lies in whom you ask to move it.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.

Somebody accumulates a lot of muscle and think himself to be a big man. But this big man is only big when all around him are smaller.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.