Quotes about Power

And that, I suppose, is what I'd been trying to tell my mother that day: that her faith in justice and rationality was misplaced, that we couldn't overcome after all, that all the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help you plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.

All the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.

So secure was his power that rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to cut whites and Hispanics into the action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and among people who preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise.

Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues

The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power—and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But

Once you became president, people's perceptions of you—even the perceptions of those who knew you best—were inevitably shaped by the media.

It's like moving-in day on a college campus, except a large percentage of the people involved are middle-aged, in suits, and, along with you, charged with running the most powerful nation on earth.

Voting is the best revenge.

Whenever I write a letter to a family who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or read an email from a constituent who has dropped out of college because her student aid has been cut, I'm reminded that the actions of those in power have enormous consequences—a price that they themselves almost never have to pay.

People think it's all a game," she said. "They don't care that there are thousands of men with guns out there who believe every word that's being said.

Both Marty and Smalls knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty—and that one man's certainty always threatened another's.

I realized that for all the power inherent in the seat I now occupied, there would always be a chasm between what I knew should be done to achieve a better world and what in a day, week, or year I found myself actually able to accomplish.