Quotes about Power

Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.

Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience. (...) The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more. (...) That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for. (...)

Yes," she said in a voice squeaky with fright. She was younger and still attractive then; she hadn't yet allowed her body to engorge. I have noted since that some kinds of men like to bully beautiful women.

I saw you as another god.

It would make me feel that I have power. But such a feeling would be an illusion, and too risky.

While I read, the Commander sits and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his eyes off me. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it.

Its racist policies, for instance, were firmly rooted in the pre-Gilead period, and racist fears provided some of the emotional fuel that allowed the Gilead takeover to succeed as well as it did.

But hatred and viciousness are addictive.

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

I take back what you have stolen, and in your languages I announce I am now nameless. My true name is a growl.