Quotes about Power

But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature.

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.

It is the power of God operating through the teaching of his Word that alone has power "to demolish strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4).

Oppressors themselves acknowledge that even the weakest of their subjects must agree to be oppressed.

The power of citizens in a society is determined by their ranking in games that have been played. A society preserves its memory of past winners. Its record-keeping functions are crucial to societal order. Large bureaucracies grow out of the need to verify the numerous entitlements of the citizens of that society.

If wealth and might are to be performed, great wealth and great might must be performed brilliantly.

Powerful societies do not silence their poietai in order that they may go to war; they go to war as a way of silencing their poietai. Original thinkers can be suppressed through execution and exile, or they can be encouraged through subsidy and flattery to praise the society's heroes. Alexander and Napoleon took their poets and their scholars into battle with them, saving themselves the nuisance of repression and along the way drawing ever larger audiences to their triumph.

A culture can be no stronger than its strongest myths.

The exercise of power always presupposes resistance. Power is never evident until two or more elements are in opposition.

Religion ceases to be religion when its poetic authority is recast as civic authority.

War is not an act of unchecked ruthlessness but a declared contest between bounded societies, or states. If a state has no enemies it has no boundaries.

Sexuality is the only finite game in which the winner's prize is the defeated opponent.