Human Power Quotes

• All human power is a compound of time and patience.

  Honore de Balzac

  Time, Power, Compounds

  Honore de Balzac (2009). “Eugenie Grandet”, p.141, The Floating Press

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• Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sad, Stupid, Silly

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.36, Penguin

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• Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.

  Honore de Balzac

  Law, May, Humans

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• Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Power, Tyrants

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

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• Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.

  Tony Robbins

  Inspirational, Success, Basketball

  Tony Robbins (2007). “Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

  Horace Mann

  Knowledge, Humans, Knowledge Is Power

  Horace Mann (1840). “Lecture on education”, p.58

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• Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person...Withou t concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Home, Rights, Progress

  Remarks at presentation of booklet on human rights, In Your Hands, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, United Nations, New York, March 27, 1958.

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• Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Home, Rights, Community

  Eleanor Roosevelt, Allida Mae Black (2013). “Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt”, p.190, Columbia University Press

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• Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.

  Samuel Johnson

  Memories, Men, Desire

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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• Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspiring, Children, Home

  Eleanor Roosevelt, Allida Mae Black (2013). “Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt”, p.190, Columbia University Press

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• A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Lying, Real

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

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• No human power can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades; it only makes hypocrites.

  Francois Fenelon

  Hypocrite, Mind, Conviction

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• Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Causes

  Francis Bacon, Rose-Mary Sargent (1999). “Selected Philosophical Works”, p.90, Hackett Publishing

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• All men now allow that if any human power could have stemmed the avalanche of the French Revolution, it would have been the reforms of Turgot.

  Evelyn Beatrice Hall

  Men, Reform, Avalanches

  "The Friends of Voltaire". Book by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, 1906.

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• The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.

  Angelina Grimke

  Doctrine, Libertarian, Unqualified

  Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.97, Penguin

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• I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Able, Should

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• Our founders understood that divine authority was necessary in order to establish a ground on which the weak, the defenseless, the powerless, the poor and the wretched would be able to stand, in the face of every human power whatsoever, and demand respect for their human rights and dignity.

  Alan Keyes

  Rights, Order, Would Be

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• God is the ultimate source of all power. All human power is therefore derived, limited, unstable and transient.

  Os Guinness

  Source, Unstable, Humans

  Os Guinness (2014). “Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times”, p.26, InterVarsity Press

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• When you feel you cannot continue in your position for another minute, and all that is in human power has been done, that is the moment when the enemy is most exhausted, and when one step forward will give you the fruits of the struggle you have borne

  Winston Churchill

  Struggle, Giving, Enemy

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• Our elevation must be the result of self-efforts and work of our own hands. No other human power can accomplish it. If we but determine it shall be so, it will be so.

  Martin Delany

  Work, Self, Hands

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• Everything teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis: therein is human power, in transference, not in creation; & therein is human destiny, not in longevity but in removal. We dive & reappear in new places.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Destiny, Transition, Metamorphosis

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1973). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1847-1848”, p.76, Harvard University Press

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• When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius

  William Crashaw

  Leadership, Courage, Imagination

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• 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.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Horse, Mean, Men

  "Principles of Economic Policy". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 23, 1958.

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• There are two types of compassion. One - is faint-hearted and sentimental. Actually, it is nothing more than impatience of the heart, that is hurrying to get rid of that hard feeling when you see other peoples' sufferings; this is not a compassion, but just an instinct will to defence yourself from misfortunes of others. But there is another compassion - real one, that demands for actions, not sentiments, it knows what it wants, and it is full of determination to do everything, what is in human power and even beyond it.

  Stefan Zweig

  Love, Dream, Determination

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• Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

  Samuel Johnson

  Power, Envy, May

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.58, Harvard University Press

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