Power Control Quotes

If I get ‘em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow.

Diplomacy [is] ... the art of restraining power.

If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne

Any who wield a large amount of power should always feel the check of power. The very principle on which the nation exists is that no person shall rise above power.

The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.

You may elect whatever candidates you please to office, if you will allow me to select the candidates.

When you're hitting a fairway wood, you've got a lot of real estate to cover to get to your target. Your first instinct is probably to give it a little more power because you're worried about coming up short.

Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

Surveillance of power is one of the most important ways to ensure that power does not abuse its status. But, of course, power does not like to be watched.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.

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

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.

... a distrust of the popular will as a safe regulator of political power.

Jesus Christ never preached there should be celibate priests. The only reason the church has this is because it's a mechanism of power and control. You can control priests who are celibate.

… power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it's language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate and to control power and not to communicate.

There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.

When you establish a powerful position, the first think you have to do is check that power and make it accountable.

A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.

I have reported enough about Islam and terrorism to recognize that a lot of what is at stake is not strictly religion, even though it's also about power and control. In the case of Karachi, like so many other growing cities, it's also about land, mafias, gang activity.

Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution

Reality is always controlled by the people who are the most insane.

When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and -- eventually -- incapable of determining their own destinies.

No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.