Power means the ability to do something, to exert strength or force, to direct or influence the behavior of others, or to influence the outcome of events. Sages have expressed a variety of opinions about power and when it is a virtue, when it is a vice, and when it is a neutral tool.
Power is the flower of organization.
Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power.
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon. [1854]
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country … corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among human creatures.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
The term ‘power’ comes from the Latin posse: to do, to be able, to change, to influence or effect. To have power is to possess the capacity to control or direct change. All forms of leadership must make use of power. The central issue of power in leadership is not Will it be used? But rather Will it be used wisely and well?
[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
If we perpetuate the same dynamics that we aim to disrupt in our movements for change, we are not interrupting power and we are not creating change –we are merely rebranding the same set of practices and the same dysfunctions.
The world that we imagine will not come into existence if we are not courageous enough to challenge power where it operates at the largest scale, impacting the lives of millions, even billions of people.
Power is what calls the shots, and power is a white male game.
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
Those lower in rank revolt in order that they may be equal and those higher in rank that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
We are powerful because we have survived.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.
There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.
Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
I understand that I don’t do what I do because it is required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken too. My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression and injustice had finally revealed something in me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.
I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a person who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.
What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
I felt like power meant that you had to be engaged in a certain kind of struggle by force of movement and battle – and that’s very exhausting. Now, power is more about certainty and stillness and realizing that the infrastructures that we gather around and worship are the least powerful things.
Image from Adobe, under license.
