Top 1200 Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.

As far as me, I'm just looking forward to the future. There's a lot of people that look to the past. I've learned from the past, absolutely. I know my past absolutely. I'm not discrediting or... ignoring my past in any way, but my focus has always been moving forward, moving forward into the future.

Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for humankind: and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm.

Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of God's law can bring forth true freedom, freedom for justice, truth, and godly life. Freedom as an absolute is simply an assertion of man's "right" to be his own god; this means a radical denial of God's law-order. "Freedom" thus is another name for the claim by man to divinity and autonomy. It means that man becomes his own absolute.

A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it. But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power. And the process goes on.

At the very outset I have to tell you that truth is what it is. You cannot mold it, you cannot change it. It is always the same. It has been the same, it is the same, it will be the same. But to say that we know the truth and that we have the truth is really a self-deception. If you had known the absolute truth there would have been no problems and everybody would have said the same thing. There would be no discussions, no arguments, no fights and wars. But when we don't know the absolute truth then we can find out our own mental conceptions as the truth. But this mind is so limited.

For us, mind has nature for its premise, being nature's truth and for that reason its absolute prius. In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has resulted as the idea arrived at being-for-itself, the object of which, as well as the subject, is the concept. This identity is absolute negativity, for whereas in nature the concept has its perfect external objectivity, this its alienation has been superseded, and in this alienation the concept has become identical with itself. But it is this identity therefore, only in being a return out of nature.

There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another... If property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property.

It is absolutely true in war, were other things equal, that numbers, whether men, shells, bombs, etc., would be supreme. Yet it is also absolutely true that other things are never equal and can never be equal.

Most power is power to coerce somebody. We don't have the power to coerce anybody.

Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. It is, in many ways, the most powerful form of free speech because it is aimed at those in power, or those whose ideas would spread hate. It is the canary in the coalmine, a cultural thermometer, and it always has to push, push, push the boundaries of society to see how much it’s grown.

Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.

All devices should just sip power and be charged like a calculator is, with a small solar cell. No power adaptors. It's easy to put a solar cell into a device, but it's not powerful enough to drive today's cell phones or laptops. They need too much power to run.

Strawweight, they have one power. In flyweight, they have totally different power. You can be the best one in the strawweight, but here, it's a totally different field. This is not someone who has less power than you. This is someone who has more power than you. This is where I feel this is my field; this is my territory.

A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well.

Collect the power. Because our fear has power. And our fear is paralyzing, and our fear sets us off course. So it's about gathering and collecting that power, waking it up. And dedicating your life to honoring it.

Not the power to conquer others but the power to become one with others is the ultimate power.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

What are the relationships between power and knowledge? There are two bad, short answers: 1. Knowledge provides an instrument that those in power can wield for their own ends. 2. A new body of knowledge brings into being a new class of people or institutions that can exercise a new kind of power.

I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I use words like 'brilliant,' it would really be an under description of the absolutely superb job that they did in breaching the so-called 'impenetrable barrier.' It was a classic- absolutely classic- military breaching of a very very tough minefield, barbed wire, fire trenches-type barrier.

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.

Faith means the fundamental response to the love that has offered itself up for me. It thus becomes clear that faith is ordered primarily to the inconceivability of God's love, which surpasses us and anticipates us. Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the 'work' of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it.

I am happy with the way I hit the ball. There is a certain element of power into it but not completely. It is like 80 per cent timing and 20 per cent power. Why do I need power hitting when I can clear the ropes with timing?

Where the observer is at first a real goodness realized, later it is a sophisticated power holder. The observer is given power and control that belongs to oneness. When oneness has that power and that control, there is love.

I had a full college experience. I kind of learned how to be a good student at Bard. I had never really cared about academics, but in college I learned the power of - I don't want to say the power of knowledge, but the power of curiosity.

I'm fully and completely convinced that the 'Hour of Power' is a step in leading people to a fuller understanding of who Jesus is. I can't tell you how many people have watched the 'Hour of Power' and say, 'Now I feel confident to be able to go to a church'... That's what the 'Hour of Power' does.

I can't quite say that I was raised Muslim, but I remember up until 5 or so I would pray, you know, with my dad. And it's actually a beautiful practice. It's giving of yourself to a higher power - no matter what you call that higher power. Living your life as close to what you think that higher power wants you to be is a really powerful thing.

I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.

Hope lies in having more faith in the power of God to heal us than in the power of anything to hurt or destroy us. In realizing that as children of God we are bigger than our problems, we have the power at last to confront them.

. . . be absolute moderne.

I've been saying for the last nine years, our power comes as much from - our respect in the world comes as much from the exercise of our power as it does from the power of our principles.

I don't think that I could have survived in my family without a naughty sense of humor; yeah, absolutely. I think my brother and I both get our senses of humor from our parents. I mean, my mother was absolutely hilarious and foul. She had the most ridiculously off color sense of humor, so that was sort of what we grew up with.

Power is lonely. Power stands apart. I have power. Therefore, I'm lonely.

The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it. We are always told that things are going on well; Why change them? 'Chi sta bene, no si mueve,' said the Italian, 'let him who stands well, stand still.' This is true; and I verily believe they would go on well with us under an absolute monarch, while our present character remains, of order, industry and love of peace, and restrained as he would be, by the proper spirit of the people.

Ethics and power are separate. Ethics and morality. I think life would be miserable if there weren't some kind of code that people operated by, but history is full of many, many people who have gotten power by very unethical means, and people who were very ethical, who get no power, people who have the most brilliant, lovely, wonderful, nice intentions and bring about horrible things in the world because they don't know how to play the power game.

The corporate woman has been defined as the 'liberated woman' and I see that as the exact opposite. I think she now is more enslaved, maybe even more than the housewife was; because she's so out of her power, and imitating male power is not female power.

If I had to choose a motto for myself, I would take this one — pure, dure, sûre, [Pure, hard, certain] — in other words: unalterable. I would express by this the ideal of the Strong, that which nothing brings down, nothing corrupts, nothing changes; those on whom one can count, because their life is order and fidelity, in accord with the eternal.

I think it's more likely that we can make positive changes happen on environment and military issues if states begin to secede. I don't think it's question of personal lifestyle preference or some sort of parochial identification with your state. I think it's an absolute moral demand that something be done to create a government with some power that can be controlled by the residents of its territory. That was supposedly the idea in creating the United States, but it doesn't exist now and we have to make it exist even if it's piece by piece, part of the United States at a time.

Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way.

The definition of 'safe' is not strictly an engineering term; it's a societal term. Does it mean absolutely no loss of life? Does it mean absolutely no contamination with radiation? What exactly does 'safe' mean?

As I have often written, power is the fundamental ingredient of the human experience. Every action in life, every thought, every choice we make-even down to what we wear and whether we are seating in first class or coach-represents a negotiation of power somewhere on the scale of power that constitutes life.

If it's not an absolute YES, it's a NO

Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashions. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried 'away with him! Crucify him!'

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

Whether one has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions, their demise is also the demise of countervailing power. A system in which there is no countervailing power is a tyranny in which power is unconstrained and unaccountable.

The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power.

Economic progress means the discovery and application of better ways of doing things to satisfy our wants. The piping of water to a household that previously dragged it from a well, the growing of two blades of grass where one grew before, the development of a power loom that enables one man to weave ten times as much as he could before, the use of steam power and electric power instead of horse or human power - all these things clearly represent economic progress.

Knowledge is NOT power. Knowledge is only POTENTIAL power. Action is power.

I judge property myself by its net earning power; that is the only rule I have been able to get.... This whole island [Manhattan] was once bought for a few strings of beads. But now you will find this property valued by its earning power, by its rent power, and that is the way to value a railroad or telegraph.

Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.

Happiness is a great power of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning men to God.

An adolescent does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.

In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui [boredom] is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.

In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?

I say that the power of vision extends through the visual rays to the surface of non-transparent bodies, while the power possessed by these bodies extends to the power of vision.

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.

Obamacare is an absolute disaster! And half the country knows it's a disaster because the alternative media read the bill and told you what's in it and gave you the absolute anti-American contents to this piece-of-garbage bill. Half of the country doesn't know what's in it. They think it's free health care because that's what Obama's been out lying to people, you keep your doctor, keep your plan and your premium's coming down $2,500. People were lied to through his teeth. And they believed him.

Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

My personal philosophy is, talk about whatever you want on a show, but it better be good. And especially if it's something that challenges folks. You don't want to be on the side of power to demean a group that is at risk. Because that's propaganda. Whenever you're on the side of power, you're not making art. Art upends power.