Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

For me, education was power.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

You don’t need a lot of credentials to be prison guard in a federal prison. And, you know, you give them a set of keys and a weapon, and they’re in power.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

Hoover was a patriot in his heart, but he definitely exceeded his power.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Obedience to God is the pathway to the life you really want to live.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable – and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

If God can’t get you to obey Him concerning your money, he won’t get to anything else you got.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Better than worshiping gods is obedience to the laws of righteousness.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.