Absolute Power Quotes - Page 4

• Imagination, which in truth
  Is but another name for absolute power
  And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
  And reason, in her most exalted mood.

  William Wordsworth

  Power, Names, Imagination

  'The Prelude' (1850) bk. 14, l. 190

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• For anyone with the traits - of feeling himself victimized, of seeking to be the strongman who resolves everything, yet sees truth only through his own self and negates all other truth outside of it - is bound to become more malignant when he has power. Power then breeds an intensification of all this because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.

  Robert Jay Lifton

  Thinking, Feelings, Isolation

  Source: www.salon.com

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• That's what Judith Herman is saying, and she's absolutely right. Power then breeds an intensification of all because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.

  Donald Trump

  Thinking, Isolation, Dangerous

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Counter-violence against the colonial regime is liberatory because it is an act, and by acting, the absolute power of colonialism, internalized by the colonized, is shaken.

  Nigel Gibson

  Acting, Violence, Colonialism

  "Franz Fanon and the Arab Uprisings". Interview with Yasser Munif, www.jadaliyya.com. Aug 17, 2012.

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• If you are an eighteen or nineteen-year-old with little education, as is often the case, and you're put in charge of many, many people on the other end of the world, you have absolute power and you're not prepared for it.

  Yaroslav Trofimov

  Years, People, Nineteen

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.

  Lord Acton

  Fate, Government, Hands

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• It's very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don't agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power.

  Mark Pellegrino

  Philosophy, Thinking, Power Corrupts

  Source: collider.com

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• An extensive empire must be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair.

  Edward Gibbon

  Communication, Army, Effort

  Edward Gibbon (2008). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.302, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. Weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us...No longer is the quest for disarmament a sign of weakness, (nor) the destruction of arms a dream - it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.

  John F. Kennedy

  Dream, War, Race

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• Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Moving, Men, Giving

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• There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

  Eric Hoffer

  Faith, Cutting, Power

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Character, Men, Numbers

  Alexis de Tocqueville, John Canfield Spencer (1854). “American Institutions and Their Influence”, p.260

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• You have the absolute power to change someone's life with kindness.

  Curt Mega

  Kindness, Power To Change, Absolutes

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• Do you know what love is? Love is an absolute power of self-totality. Love is not what you think love is. Love is a strength. Love is a goodness, like Godliness. There is no limit to it. There is no shortage in it. There is no bargaining in it.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Love, Family, Thinking

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• Pierre Bordieu was right: "The all powerful is he who does not wait but makes others wait. Absolute power is the power to make oneself unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to place them in total uncertainty by offering no scope for their capacity to predict."

  Michael Jackson

  Powerful, Offering, People

  Michael Jackson (2004). “In Sierra Leone”, p.135, Duke University Press

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• Countless people have attempted to define the absolute power of the world of nature. Some praise it as god, some call it the Buddha, others call it truth. Still others convert nature into a philosophy by which they attempt to sound its deepest truth. Such attempts to define the power of nature are no more than striving to escape its effects.

  Koichi Tohei

  Philosophy, People, Sound

  "Book of Ki: Co-ordinating Mind and Body in Daily Life". Book by Koichi Tohei, p. 106, 1976.

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• The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Father, Military

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• Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

  Howard Nemerov

  Responsibility, Government, Promise

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• Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the ... heart and spirit of men who resist power?

  Woodrow Wilson

  Heart, Men, Justice

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1978). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Powerful, yes, that is the word that I constantly rolled on my tongue, I dreamed of absolute power, the kind that forces others tokneel, that forces the enemy to capitulate, finally converting him, and the more the enemy is blind, cruel, sure of himself, buried in his conviction, the more his admission proclaims the royalty of he who has brought on his defeat.

  Albert Camus

  Powerful, Enemy, Tongue

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• It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Safety, Guarantees, Function

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.64, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Army, Power, Thinking

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.509

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• Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.

  John Locke

  Ambition, Hands, People

  John Locke (1947). “Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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• Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power.

  Pierre Corneille

  Rebel, Awareness, Masters

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