Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Power

"Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting." -

"Modern technology has led to the concentration of economic and political power, and to the development of a society controlled (ruthlessly in the totalitarian states, politely and inconspicuously in the democracies) by Big Business and Big Government." -

"Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make their life full, significant, and interesting." -

"The ideal man is the non-attached man. Non-attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non-attached to his cravings for power and possessions. Non-attached even to science and speculation and philanthropy." -

"The most propitious environment for equality is constituted by a society where the means of production are owned cooperatively, where power is decentralized, and where the community is organized in a multiplicity of small, interrelated but, as far as may be, self-governing groups of mutually responsible men and women." -

"Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting." -

"Modern technology has led to the concentration of economic and political power, and to the development of a society controlled (ruthlessly in the totalitarian states, politely and inconspicuously in the democracies) by Big Business and Big Government." -

"You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away form them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s not longer in your power – he’s free again." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fully Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

"When you have robbed a man of everything, he is no longer in your power. He is free again." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fully Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

"You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away form them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s not longer in your power – he’s free again." -

"When you have robbed a man of everything, he is no longer in your power. He is free again." -

"In the general course of human nature, a power over a man's subsistence amount to a power over his will." - Alexander Hamilton

"The amelioration of the condition of mankind, and the increase of human happiness ought to be the leading objects of every political institution, and the aim of every individual, according to the measure of his power, in the situation he occupies." - Alexander Hamilton

"When we pray, we link ourselves with the inexhaustible power that spins the universe. We ask that a part of this power be apportioned to our needs. Even in asking, our human deficiencies are filled and we arise strengthened and repaired." - Alexis Carrel

"[Democratic government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"The real cause, the effective one that makes men lose power is that they have become unworthy to exercise it." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"Do not forget the most important fact that neither heredity nor environment is a determining factor. Both are giving only the frame and the influences which are answered by the individual in regard to his styled creative power." - Alfred Adler

"Truth derives [its] self-justifying power form its services in the promotion of Beauty. Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Evil is the brute motive force of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision. Evil is overruling, retarding, hurting. The power of God is the worship He inspires. The worship of God is not a rule of safety – it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Religion will not gain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power." -

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead to sovereign power." -

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any." - Alice Walker, fully Alice Malsenior Walker

"For the Founders, minorities are in general bad things, mostly identical to factions, selfish groups which have no concern as such for the common good... The Founders wished to achieve a national majority concerning the fundamental rights and then prevent that majority from using that power to over turn those fundamental rights. In 20th Century social science, however, the common good disappeared and along with it the negative view of minorities. The very idea of majority... is done away with in order to protect the minorities" - Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom

"We believe that the most basic of all changes in human social organization have been the result of three processes. Starting 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented in the Middle East – probably by a woman. That’s the First Wave. Roughly 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution triggered a Second Wave of change. Brute-force technologies amplified human and animal muscle power and gave rise to an urban, factory-centered way of life. Sometime after World War II, a gigantic Third Wave began transforming the planet, based on tools that amplify mind rather than muscle. The Third Wave is bigger, deeper and faster than the other two. This is the civilization of the computer, the satellite and Internet." - Alvin Toffler

"Knowledge, violence, and wealth, and the relationships among them, define power in society." - Alvin Toffler

"Power is defined [as] the ability to make certain things happen, or to prevent certain things from happening." - Alvin Toffler

"The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power." - Amos Bronson Alcott

"Love is a force... It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product. It is a power, like money, or steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow

"Love is a force… It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product. It is a power, like money, or steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow

"Man’s dwelling place, who could found you on reasoning, or build your walls with logic? You exist, and you exist not. You are, and are not. True, you are made out of diverse materials, but for your discovery an inventive mind was needed. Thus if a man pulled his house to pieces, with the design of understanding it, all he would have before him would be heaps of bricks and stones and tiles. he would not be able to discover therein the silence, the shadows and the privacy they bestowed. Nor would he see what service this mass of bricks, stones and tiles could render him, now that they lacked the heart and soul of the architect, the inventive mind which dominated them. For in mere stone the heart and soul of man have no place. But since reasoning can deal with only such material things as bricks and stones and tiles, and there is no reasoning about the heart and soul that dominate them and thus transform them into silence - inasmuch as the heart and soul have no concern with the rules of logic or the science of numbers - this is where I step in and impose my will. I, the architect; I, who have a heart and soul; I, who wield the power of transforming stone into silence. I step in and mold that clay, which is the raw material, into the likeness of the creative vision that comes to me from God; and not through any faculty of reason. Thus, taken solely by the savor it will have, I build my civilization; as poets build their poems, bending phrases to their will and changing words, without being called upon to justify the phrasing of the changes, but taken solely by the savor these will have, vouched by their hearts." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given." - Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduce din to the education of the young." - Aristotle NULL

"When men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know form our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities." - Aristotle NULL

"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?... With friends men are more able both to think and to act." - Aristotle NULL

"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." - Aristotle NULL

"If you really want to know a man, give him power. The evil man will become proud, but the good man will become more humble than he was before." - Aristotle NULL

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations." - Aristotle NULL

"The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." - Aristotle NULL

"The ultimate value of life depends on awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival." - Aristotle NULL

"Though sixteen civilizations may have perished already to our knowledge, and nine others may be now at the point of death, we - the twenty-sixty - are not compelled to submit the riddle of our fate to the blind arbitrament of statistics. The divine spark of creative power is still alive in us, and, if we have the grace to kindle it into flame, then the stars in their courses cannot defeat our efforts to attain the goal of human endeavor." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"God’s love is unlimited but… his power is not." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousandfold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard in times past by rare saints." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousand-fold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard attained in times past by rare saints." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"The greater the power that we have to change the World into something nearer to our ideal, the greater becomes our distress at our failing to perform those beneficent and useful acts of creation which we know to be within our power." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or for intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement without hostility or drama, and therefore all the more deadly." - Arthur Koestler

"The power by virtue of which Christianity was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism of Greece and Rome, lies solely on its pessimism, in the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful, while Judaism and heathenism were both optimistic." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"[Man’s] self-conscious existence as man forces on him a choice of uses for his faculties... This choice is what is called free will. Free will, therefore, not only a prerogative but an obligation for man. Free will thus understood, has nothing to do with destiny. It is a power which man is compelled by his own nature to use, whether the use he makes of it is predestined or not... the responsibility of deciding rests with me just the same whether the outcome is predetermined or not. If it is predetermined, it is my own past habit-forming and character-forming decisions in this and previous lifetimes which have predetermined it; and this decision in its turn will help to condition my mind, thus determining future ones." - Arthur W Osborn

"Perhaps the simplest expression of true detachment is to say that the power of love dissolves self-centerdness and brings the wisdom to act effectively in all situations." - Arthur W Osborn