I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we’ve had.

I think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn’t want to give up power.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

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.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

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

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they’ve had forever. And they’ve been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

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.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

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

These people are very unskilled in arms… with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

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

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

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

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

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

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

Much of India that we dream of still lies ahead of us: housing, power, water and sanitation for all; bank accounts and insurance for every citizen; connected and prosperous villages; and, smart and sustainable cities.

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.

That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

Power is competence.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.