Quotes & Sayings About Excessive Power

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy. — John Maynard Keynes

The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. — Eric Schlosser

It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out. — Johann Gottfried Herder

There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal. — Hunter S. Thompson

This regard for the liberties of Europe, this care at one time for the protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance of power, is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain. — John Bright

15 "probable illnesses" that are afflicting the curial body, including those of feeling "indispensable;" of excessive work habits and not enough time to rest and recharge before the Lord; of a spiritual hardening of hearts; of over-planning and not leaving room for the Holy Spirit to function; of a lack of collaboration; of living autonomously while forgetting salvation history; of vanity; of living a double life; of the "terrorism of gossip"; of egotistic opportunism; of indifference; of pessimism; of materialism; of cliquishness; and of the allures of power. — Anonymous

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. — Russ Roberts

Restoring trust, reinventing political parties, finding new ways in which average citizens can meaningfully participate in the political process, creating new mechanisms of effective governance, limiting the worst impacts of checks and balances while averting excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, and enhancing the capacity of nation-states to work together should be the central political goals of our time. — Moises Naim

Titles are tinsel, power a corrupter, glorya bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

[I]t is true that [the provisions of the Bill of Rights] were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century whenever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many. — Hugo Black

It may not be improper, however, to remark two consequences, evidently flowing from an extension of the federal power to every subject falling within the idea of the "general welfare." One consequence must be, to enlarge the sphere of discretion allotted to the executive magistrate ... The other consequence would be, that of an excessive augmentation of the offices, honors, and emoluments, depending on the executive will. — James Madison

Manners matter, asserts the professor. What provokes rebellion, he asserts, is not as often a theory out allowing for arbitrary power but be excessive, brusque use of it by a particular individual. — Robert J. Allison

John Marshall's warning that the power to tax is the power to destroy has taken on far greater meaning ... more specifically, the power of the Internal Revenue Service is threatening to destroy the freedom of religion , guaranteed by the First Amendment. As part of that guarantee, Congress has granted tax exemptions for churches to avoid excessive interference in their religious activities. — Chuck Grassley

Society gained more by not placing excessive power in the hands of mediocre politicians than it lost by limiting the power of great heroes and statesmen who might or might not appear once every few centuries. — Yoshiki Tanaka

Discontented inhabitants who willingly admit a foreign power either through excessive ambition or through fear, as was the case with the Etolians, who admitted the Romans into Greece. So it was with every province that the Romans entered: they were brought in by the inhabitants themselves. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy ... , indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance ... 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love 3. Believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people ... 4. Requires excessive admiration 5. Has a sense of entitlement ... 6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends 7. Lacks empathy 8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her 9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes — Jon Krakauer

What ever the course of our lives, we should recieve them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine. — Galileo Galilei

The only sure way to stop excessive risk taking on Wall Street so you don't risk losing your job, or your savings or your home, is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street by busting up the big banks. — Robert Reich

System 2 and the electrical circuits in your home both have limited capacity, but they respond differently to threatened overload. A breaker trips when the demand for current is excessive, causing all devices on that circuit to lose power at once. In contrast, the response to mental overload is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity, so it receives the attention it needs; "spare capacity" is allocated second by second to other tasks. In our version of the gorilla experiment, we instructed the participants to assign priority to the digit task. We know that they followed that instruction, because the timing of the visual target had no effect on the main task. If the critical letter was presented at a time of high demand, the subjects simply did not see it. When the transformation task was less demanding, detection performance was better. — Daniel Kahneman

It was not the dead-tiredness that comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during the last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days' rest. When — Jack London

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall. — Francis Bacon

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality. — James George Frazer

Twenty years earlier, he had shaped the faction opposed to Andrew Jackson into a political party. Its members became known as Whigs because just as the Whigs of England had objected to the unchecked power of the throne, the American Whigs resisted "King Andrew's" excessive assumption of authority. Abraham — David S. Heidler

There can never be a complete confidence in a power which is excessive. — Tacitus

A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable. — Bertrand Russell

And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all? — Joseph Conrad

Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints. — Herbert Spencer

In a very real way, attention is a drug. Like dope, attention makes people feel good by delivering a 'hit' of certain neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit, or block the transmission of electrochemical currents) in the brain. Like anything that does this (viz., sex, risk-taking, power), in excessive amounts it's addictive. And, simply because it works, nothing is as addictive as a pain killer. Hence Narcissus is well-named from the Greek word for narcosis.

Attention is his pain killer. — Kathy Krajco

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. — James Bovard

Imposing excessive new regulations, or closing coal-fired power plants, would produce few health or environmental benefits. But it would exact huge costs on society - and bring factories, offices and economies to a screeching halt in states that are 80-98% dependent on coal: Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. — Paul Driessen

In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already. — Elif Safak

Have you ever felt your destiny unfolding, beloved? Have you experienced the intensity of the hunt, the fixation of attention that only fate can explain? Have you ever told yourself your feelings were
excessive, but known that something huge and pivotally important was carrying you along like a riptide? You can fight that current all you want; you know it will still have its way with you. Or you can
try swimming along with it, and grow amazed by your own power - until you pause and realize that you aren't moving but being moved. You're not in control, not at all, and that's what makes the feeling so
exquisitely exciting. — Martha N. Beck