Great Throughts Treasury

"The mind has more to do with holding the fastnesses of life and has more sovereign sway over it than the power of the soul. For without the understanding and the mind no part of the soul can maintain itself in the frame the smallest fraction of time." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

"Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy." - Alexander Maclaren

"Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power." -

"With respect to God and truth, one has not the right to choose according to his own whim any path whatsoever, he must choose the true path, in so far as it is in his power to know." - Jacques Maritain

"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation." - Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels

"The difficulties, hardships, and trials of life, the obstacles one encounters on the road to fortune, are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance. Peril is the element in which power is developed." - William Matthews

"Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality, and when each citizen would fain to be upon a level with those whom he has chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the judges." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"To be human is to suffer loss. To lose it to grieve. To grieve is to heal. Grace and power to you in leaning in to and moving through that painful process." - Thomas Mozley

"[There are] four destructive effects of religious and therapeutic disciplines: 1) A practice can reinforce limiting traits, preventing their removal or transformation. 2) A practice can support limiting beliefs, giving them greater power in the life of an individual or culture. 3) A practice can subvert balanced growth by emphasizing some virtues at the expense of others. 4) A practice can limit integral development when it focuses on partial though authentic experience of superordinary reality." - Michael Murphy

"Hateful is the power and pitiable is the life of those who wish to be feared rather than be loved." - Cornelius Nepos

"A living being seeks, above all, to discharge its strength. Life is will to power." -

"Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages call inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation , in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice... Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity... The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume a visible form. Architecture is sort of oratory of power by means of forms." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"People demand freedom only when they have no power." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The most vulnerable and at the same time the most unconquerable thing is human self-love; indeed, it is though being wounded that its power grows and can, in the end, become tremendous." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"No man’s credit can fall so low but that, if he bear his shame as he should to, and profit by it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to redeem his reputation." - Lord Nottingham, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord Howard of Effingham

"Next to invention is the owner of interpreting invention; next to beauty, the power of appreciating beauty." -

"What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power." - Babe Paley, fully Barbara Cushing "Babe" Mortimer Paley

""Knowledge," says Bacon, "is power"; but mere knowledge is not power; it is only possibility. Action is power; and its highest manifestation is when it is directed by knowledge." - Thomas W. Palmer

"Have faith in your immortal nature. Know that you are Spirit. Those who think they are limited and mortal, that they are born and that they die, are superstitious. Anything that is weakening, anything that is degenerating, anything that tells us that we are limited human beings is a terrible superstition. By all the means in our power we must overcome it. Let us tear aside this veil of superstition, recognize our true nature, and know that we are eternal, imperishable and immortal." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL

"Can a man control his future? Yes. Despite the system they live under, men everywhere have, I believe, more power over the future than ever before. The important thing is that we must choose to exercise it. What we do today determines how the world shall go, for tomorrow is made up of the sum total of today's experiences... Far from feeling hopeless or helpless, we must seize every opportunity, however small, to help the world around us toward peace, productivity and human brotherhood." - Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

"Man's great power of thinking, remembering, and communicating are responsible for the evolution of civilization." -

"[Regimentation] I fear you. As victors, you may become the bureaucracy: doling out to each his bit as in a poorhouse, assigning to each his task as in a prison. And you will exterminate the creator of new worlds, - the free human will, and stop up the purest well of human happiness - the power of the one to face thousands, to stand up to peoples and generations." -

"Unlimited power corrupts the possessor." -

"The greatest business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL

"God listens to our weeping when the occasion itself is beyond our knowledge but still within his love and power." - Daniel A. Poling

"Here is a mystery, the stupendous mystery of the Christian religion, the ineffable mystery of three persons in one God. We cannot define it. Every human attempt at definition involves it in deeper mystery. The arithmetic of heaven is beyond us. Yet this is no more mysterious and inexplicable than the trinity of our own nature; body, soul, and spirit; and no man has ever shown that it involved a contradiction or in any way conflicted with the testimony of our senses or with demonstrated truth; and we must accept it by the power of a simple faith, or rush into tritheism on the one hand or unitarianism on the other." - Frederick D. Power, fully Frederick Dunglison Power

"It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed." - Publius Syrus

"Beauty is power; a smile is its sword." - Charles Reade

"Isolation from reality is inseparable from the exercise of power." - George Edward Reedy

"If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception." - Paul Reichmann

"Let us accept different forms of religion among men, as we accept different languages, wherein there is still but one human nature expressed. Every genius has most power in his own language, and every heart in its own religion." -

"Man hath power ouer his wordis til they be spoken, & whan he hath ones vttered them he hath noo power ouer hem." - Earl Rivers, Richard Woodville (or Wydeville), 1st Earl Rivers

"Every human mind is a great slumbering power until awakened by keen desire and by definite resolution to do." -

"It is not a minister's wisdom but his conviction which imparts itself to others. Nothing gives life but life. Real flame alone kindles other flame; this was the power of the apostles. "We believe and therefore speak." Firm faith in what they spoke, that was the basis of the apostles' strength." -

"There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God... No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize." -

"Law being purely the declaration of the general will, it is clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power, the people cannot be represented; but in that of the executive power, which is only the force that is applied to giver the law effect, it both can and should be represented." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone... What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Kind words are benedictions. They are not only instruments of power, but of benevolence and courtesy; blessings both to the speaker and hearer of them." - Frederic Saunders

"Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. The way in which power works is a mystery." - Albert Schweitzer

"The power of ideals is incalculable. We see no power in a drop of water. But let it get into a crack in the rock and be turned into ice, and it splits the rock; turned into steam, it drives the pistons of the most powerful engines. Something has happened to it which makes active the power that is latent in it." - Albert Schweitzer

"Since the beginning of civilization we have explained our existence in terms of what we could observe... Maybe we will discover that the only true reality is a state of mind, shaped by the information we can process and contexts in which we see it. Maybe the Supreme Being we call God can best be appreciated as the power of ultimate understanding. Maybe our destination has always been to learn and grow as we approach the light of ultimate understanding. Only the context of our ability to process information changes." - Frank Scully

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." -

"There greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depends upon the future. We let go the preseNt, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance - and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty." -

"Of all things beyond my power, I value nothing more than friendship with people who sincerely love the truth, for I believe that of the things beyond our power, there is nothing in the world we can love with tranquillity except such people." -

"Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power of men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words." -

"The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas." -