We should understand the source of our authority and something of the keys that control its power.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

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

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

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.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.

Affluence means influence.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

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.

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.

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.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Control is the source of strategic power.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

For me, education was power.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

Jesus is a divine guest inside of you all the time – one who loves, understands, sees and hears you. He wants to live in oneness with you… to be the centerpiece of everything you do.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

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.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Every reign must submit to a greater reign.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.