Quotes about Power

Don't you want to be free of all that? [33] 'But how can I do it?' You've often heard how — you need to suspend desire completely, and train aversion only on things within your power. You should dissociate yourself from everything outside yourself — the body, possessions, reputation, books, applause, as well as office or lack of office. Because a preference for any of them immediately makes you a slave, a subordinate, and prone to disappointment.

Can we avoid people? How is that possible? And if we associate with them, can we change them? Who gives us that power?

End the habit of despising things that are not within your power

You cannot choose the era, nationality, family, and body into which you are born. But to act well in your given role—this is your sphere of power.

If you make peace with all things that are beyond your power, refusing to fight them, you will be invincible.

You do not seem to realize that the mind is subject only to itself. It alone can control it, which shows the force and justice of God's edict: the strong shall always prevail over the weak.

If you wish to have peace and contentment, release your attachment to all things outside your control. This is the path of freedom and happiness. If you want not just peace and contentment, but power and wealth too, you may forfeit the former in seeking the latter, and will lose your freedom and happiness along the way.

Human beings are naturally hierarchical beasts. Democracy is not their native religion.

Maybe she will make our wishes come true before we burn her.

The real tragedy of humankind,' Shealtiel used to say, 'is not that the persecuted and enslaved crave to be liberated and to hold their heads high. No. The worst thing is that the enslaved secretly dream of enslaving their enslavers. The persecuted yearn to be persecutors. The slaves dream of being masters. As in the book of Esther.

Salt water is the greatest component of our world, yet some people never see an ocean. That doesn't change the ocean. It is constant and powerful, and like the love of God, whether we're immersed in it, standing on the shore, or a thousand miles away, it remains.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.