Thoughts on power

Image: Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur

“There are two kinds of power. One is obtained by the fear of punishment, and the other by acts of love.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
 
“I love being at the centre of things.”  
—Margaret Thatcher
 
“Leadership is not about being nice. It’s about being right and being strong.”
—Paul Keating
 
“There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
—Lord Acton
 
“Power should always be distrusted, in whatever hands it is placed.”
—Sir William Jones
 
“Where there is power, there is resistance.”
—Michel Foucault
 
“Men in great place are thrice servants: Servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame and servants of business.”
—Francis Bacon
 
“Athens holds sway over Greece; I dominate Athens; my wife dominates me; our newborn son dominates her.”
—Themistocles
 
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.”
—John Adams
 
“He that would govern others first should be the master of himself.”
—Philip Massinger
 
“I looked around at all the little fishes present and said, ‘I’m the Kingfish’.”
—Huey Long
 
“The new source of power is not money in the hands of the few but information in the hands of many.”
—John Naisbitt
 
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
 
“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli
 
“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.”
—Salvador Dali
 
“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”
—Aristotle
 
“The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.”
—Albert Einstein

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
—Alice Walker