A Quote by Seneca the Younger

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration.

Seneca the Younger

Quote Topics

Been Duration Long Power Seldom Violence

Quote Author

Seneca the Younger
Roman - Philosopher
4 BC - 65

It is seldom that minds long exercised in business have formed any habits of conversing with themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of occupation.

Edward Gibbon

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

Ayn Rand

We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters -- then we are for it!

Vladimir Lenin

Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.

Kenneth Kaunda

Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.

Cesar Chavez

My country has been wracked with violence for a long time. Just to see all the violence on the news makes you sick. It's true that violence is in our nature, but I try to explore deeply where it comes from and where it goes and what it creates. Not in a moralistic or preachy way, but just to observe the real consequences of violence in a human being or in a society.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The lover of photography is fascinated both by the instant and by the past. The moment captured in the image is of near-zero duration and is located in a ever-receding then. At the same time, the spectator's now, the moment of looking at the image, has no fixed duration. It can be extended as long as fascination lasts and endlessly reiterated as long as curiosity returns.

Peter Wollen

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Hannah Arendt

Power over must be replaced by shared power, by the power to do things, by the discovery of our own strength as opposed to a passive receiving of power exercised by others, often in our name.

Petra Kelly

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Kenneth Kaunda

Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused.

Herman Melville

Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret.

Daniel Schorr

The television screen is the lens through which most children learn about violence. Through the magnifying power of this lens, their everyday life becomes suffused by images of shootings, family violence, gang warfare, kidnappings, and everything else that contributes to violence in our society. It shapes their experiences long before they have had the opportunity to consent to such shaping or developed the ability to cope adequately with this knowledge.