Quotes about power

"All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by the correct application of power"

Fifty years is ample time to change the world and it's people almost beyond recognition. All that I'd required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal- and power

Sons and daughters of wealthy men, and others who inherit money which they did not earn... Power in the hands of one who did not acquire it gradually, is often fatal to success.

The only difference between the Sane and the Insane, is IN and yet within this world, the Sane have the power to have the Insane locked up.

All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.

“As always there is someone to hold a tight hand on the purse strings—usually the most affluent of the persons in authority.”

“This is how they become affluent.”

Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces...As soon as (the police) slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria. People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption. The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.

Control is necessary and even good—so long as I do the controlling.

If the dictators and militarists who used to start wars had to earn by manual labor what their wars cost, there would have been very few wars.

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people's convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that 'they' will never allow him to do this, that, and the other.

And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.

The Value or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power...