Quotes
The more power something has, the less the actual facts matter.
p. 184
Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power.
p. 102
‘‘This isn’t some stupid storybook where the underdog wins in the end. This is the real world. The strongest do what they want, and everyone else has to live with it. Or”—she glanced significantly at Isaac—“not.”
p. 323
“Don’t tell me this is about protecting humanity,” Alice said. “None of you cares one bit about the people in the real world. This is about power, just as it always has been. You’re afraid of losing a little bit of power.”
p. 167
Law is the agent of those in political power; it is the product of those powerful enough to define right and wrong and to have that definition legitimized by “law.” This is not to say that “might makes right,” but it is to say that Might makes Law.
p. 95
What the master giveth, the master can take away.
p. 101
“The law” became a convenient tool to be used by illegal masters when black people sought to move.
p. 95
Power makes people believe they’re invulnerable.
p. 187
It isn't the gold that changes man, it is the power which gold gives to man that changes the soul of man. This power, though, is only imaginary. If not recognized by other men, it does not exist.
The class I belong to always has to wait and wait, stand long nights and days in long files to get a cup of coffee and a slice of bread. Everybody in the world, official or boss, takes it for granted that our sort of people have ages, of time to waste. It is different with those who have money. They can arrange everything with money. Therefore they never have to wait. We who cannot pay with cold cash have to pay with our time instead. Suppose you get sore at the official who lets you wait and wait, and you say something about the citizen’s right it won’t help you a bit. He then lets you wait ten times longer, and you never do it again. He is the king. Do not forget that. Don’t ever believe that kings were done with when the fathers of the country made a revolution.
p. 41
Power is for the powerful. Let power fall into the hands of the weak and the rest is tyranny.
I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it. (p8)
