power accumulation Quotes

For thousands of years, until about 1850, you see humans accumulating more and more power by the invention of new technologies and by new systems of organization in the economy and in politics, but you don't see any real improvement in the well-being of the average person.

Democracy, Whiggery, and Cliquery, will attract their elements and foment divisions among the people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power …

This administration seems intent on accumulating unchecked power.

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.

I noticed long ago that Amin has the tendency to concentrate power in his own hands but I did not attach any particular significance to this. However, recently this tendency has become dangerous.

I suppose people also have to be a little more careful or circumspect if they're going to leverage their celebrity to promote their political aims. The problem is that politics is about the accretion of power, and it's very difficult not to get giddy with power.

Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.

Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it.

Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power?

Fear & complacency allow power to accumulate & liberty & privacy to suffer

The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.

Religion forbids us from assuming a God-like character. This is especially true in politics and government, where limiting the power of the state, division of powers, and the doctrine of checks and balances are established in order to prevent accumulation of power that might lead to such Godly claims.

[Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.

Not everyone in an organization is in a position to accumulate power through competent performance because most people are just carrying out the ordinary and the expected - even if they do it very well. The extent to which a job is routinized fails to give an advantage to anyone doing it because 'success' is seen as inherent in the very establishment of the position and the organization surrounding it. Neither persons nor organizations get 'credit' for doing the mandatory or the expected.

The concept of unlimited expansion that alone can fulfill the hope for unlimited accumulation of capital, and brings about the aimless accumulation of power, makes the foundation of new political bodies - which up to the era of imperialism always had been the upshot of conquest - well-nigh impossible.

Consensus politics is a cyclical thing-in order to accumulate power, one must dispose of it, and as one disposes of it, one must accumulate more power to replace it. In financial terms, a dollar must be spent to make a dollar-or two, if things go well.

What is needed by him who would succeed in the highest degree possible is careful planning. He is to accumulate reserved power, that he may be equal to all emergencies.

If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?

Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too.

Fear is being used by the political class as an excuse to accumulate more power and self-importance - and collect a lot more taxes to support their agenda.

Accumulation of power is as necessary as its diffusion, or rather more so.

The great danger to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usurpation by the Government of power not granted by the people, but by the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others. Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.