Ferdinand Lassalle Quotes

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, truly powerful...

...a state is not the same thing as a society ... A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.

It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.

There is no inherent power in the office of the vice presidency. Zero. None. It's all a reflection of your relationship with the president. I mean, Kennedy never let Johnson in the office.

I am the Federal Government.

'Prison Notebooks' gives me a basic understanding of how power can influence people through cultural products and intellectual groups, so they will voluntarily support the hegemony.

The corporations and the media don't need power; they already have it.

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.

I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.

It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

Power is not just political. It can be cultural; it can be spiritual.

Dictators, unlike Democrats, depend on a small coterie to sustain their power. These backers, generally drawn from the military, the senior civil service, and family or clan members, have a synergistic relationship with their dictator. The dictator delivers opportunities for them to become rich, and they protect him from being overthrown.

Washington lawyers and politicians have been bedfellows from the moment our nation was conceived.

Regulation has crept up on us steadily…. The most alarming feature of this concentration of power in the Federal government is the creation of omnipotent commissions to exercise it. The new fields of Federal control are administered by small Boards or executive commissions, usually appointed by the President and responsible to no one but the President. They are part of the Executive Department. But their function is not executive only. They have two additional functions: one is legislative, the other is judicial. These commissions write the rules which make the laws effective. Then they administer the rules; and when the rules are violated, they it in judgment on the violations.

When I came here I thought I worked for the President. But I didn’t realize that I also worked for 534 other people at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who all think that they are presidents.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, masses about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive men [i.e. governments], and the men who succumb to their own motive forces.

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.