Perception of Power Quotes

Power resides only where men believe it resides. [...] A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.

A strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength.

Power in Washington is simply the perception of power.

Deterrence, of course, is all about the perception of power. It hinges on convincing adversaries that, with force, guile, or economic isolation, you can make the think twice about acting against American interests.

Power is a thing of perception. They don't need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you

It seems ironic that the same convention which thinks Will Rogers is a clown thinks Huey Long is a statesman.

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

Everybody's trying to hold onto some shred of dignity in the process of it all, and, at the same time, never talking about how they don't have the power. No one has the power. So, you know, producers - we always think, "Well, producers are very powerful," but producers don't really have the power.

Money is like a canvas or a shape shifter. It's like whatever you project on that canvas, that's what money is for you. Really, in its essence it's power. Most people relate to money the way they relate to power. They either think other people have it, and they don't and they're mad about it, or they feel fearful of it like having it would be a burden or a responsibility.

The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

Most Americans honestly believe America is the most powerful nation on earth, but actualy the most powerful nation is imagi-nation.

We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority -- a small minority -- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions.

....nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility

The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

The depositary of power is always unpopular.

I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people.

...it is sensible to begin by asking the beginning questions, why imagine power in the first place, and what is the relationship between one's motive for imagining power and the image one ends up with.

A grass blade believes that men build palaces for it to grow in. Grass wedges its way between the closest blocks of marble and it brings them down. This power of feeble life which can creep in anywhere is greater than that of the mighty behind their cannons.

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

Somebody accumulates a lot of muscle and think himself to be a big man. But this big man is only big when all around him are smaller.

If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.