Quotes about Power

Understand yourself, Piter. You want her because she was a Duke's woman, a symbol of his power—beautiful, useful, exquisitely trained for her role.

Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is an agreement and a tradition upon which to build.

No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.

they were non-thinkers, attaching themselves to any fancied power for the identity which this gave them. Without a reflection from her they were empty. Thus, they were dangerous.

It's an old, old trick of autocratic rule. Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.

But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier … including one's own ignorance.

Many histories are largely worthless because prejudiced, written to please one powerful group or another.

Aceasta e aberaÈ›ia puterii: în ultim? instan?? este eficace numai într-un Univers absolut, limitat. Dar lecÈ›ia de c?p?tâi a Universului nostru relativist este c? lucrurile se schimb?. Orice putere trebuie s? înfrunte întotdeauna o putere mai mare.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality . . . and fall.

The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing-care of the young, the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and Practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.

Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness.