"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
— Oscar Wilde

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. "
— Roseanne Barr

"Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villians."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"Names have power."
— Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief)

"...beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."
— Madeleine Albright

"If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?"
— George Deacon

"It is not truth that matters, but victory."
— Adolf Hitler

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."
— Ezra Pound

"Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum."
— Paulo Coelho

"...profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Hocus Pocus)

"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."
— David Brin

"Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism."
— Mercedes Lackey (Alta)

"Today I married myself and I became my own wife."
— Johnette Napolitano, Concrete Blonde

"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
— Frank Herbert

"Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

"You may be a lady but you are still the man!"
— Lynda Barry (The Lynda Barry Experience)

"Silence is the ultimate weapon of power."
— Charles de Gaulle

"And Gandalf said: "This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what must be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the time comes of the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely. "
— Louise Labé

"The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want."
— Martha Grimes (Dust: A Richard Jury Mystery)

"It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant

(Isabella)"
— William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure)

"The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it."
— Adolf Hitler

"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted."
— Isaiah Berlin (The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas)

"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."
— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)

"You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie."
— Kathleen Hanna

"Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence."
— Adolf Hitler

"Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"Patience is power.
Patience is not an absence of action;
rather it is "timing"
it waits on the right time to act,
for the right principles
and in the right way.
"
— Fulton J. Sheen

"With great power often comes great confusion.
"
— Dan Allen (Seam in Action)

"The pow'r I have on you is to spare you / The malice towards you, to forgive you.
Posthumus"
— William Shakespeare (Cymbeline)

"Wissenschaft ist Macht."
— Roger Bacon

""You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark." "
— Giovanni Boccaccio

"Don't look so surprised Aasmaani. Even yuppies read poetry sometimes. Besides, the point is, I never renounced power. I just woke and realized I didn't have it, that's all."
— Kamila Shamsies, "Ed" in Broken Verses

"Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper."
— Dr. Thomas Fuller