Great Public Power Quotes & Sayings

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility. With respect to the former, it grows out of the great rule of equality, which is grounded upon our common nature, and which Philo, with propriety and beauty, calls the mother of justice. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance, of original justice. The other foundation of law, which is utility, must be understood, not of partial or limited, but of general and public, utility, connected in the same manner with, and derived directly from, our rational nature: for any other utility may be the utility of a robber, but cannot be that of a citizen, - the interest of the domestic enemy, and not that of a member of the commonwealth. — Edmund Burke

As soon as men who believe they are doing God's will get hold of power, whether household or village or in Jerusalem or Rome itself, the devil enters them. It isn't long before they start drawing up lists of punishments for all kinds of innocent activities, sentencing people to be flogged or stoned in the name of God for wearing this or eating that or believing the other. And the privileged ones will build great palaces and temples to strut around in, and levy taxes on the poor to pay for their luxuries...and put them poor harmless heretics they flush out to horrible public deaths, to terrify the rest into obedience. — Philip Pullman

Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and popularity. He still had his enemies ... But the people as a whole now admired and respected him deeply ... His unscrupulous past and cynical opportunism were being largely forgotten or forgiven. He was gradually becoming recognized not only as the prophet of a new Conservatism, at once compassionate at home and positive abroad, but as a great statesmen whom the Queen did well to honour. Power had brought responsibility. By 1878 the transformation in public attitudes towards Disraeli was complete. — Christopher Hibbert

The power to investigate is a great public trust. — Emanuel Celler

The colonialist's existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he must disown the colonized while their existence is indispensable to his own. Having chosen to maintain the colonial system, he must contribute more vigor to its defense than would have been needed to dissolve it completely. Having become aware of the unjust relationship which ties him to the colonized, he must continually attempt to absolve himself. He never forgets to make a public show of his own virtues, and will argue with vehemence to appear heroic and great. At the same time his privileges arise just as much from his glory as from degrading the colonized. — Albert Memmi

The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands. — Spiro T. Agnew

One of the characteristics of modern political life is its professionalization, such that it attracts mainly the kind of people with so great an avidity for power and self-importance that they do not mind very much the humiliations of the public exposure to which they are inevitably subjected. — Theodore Dalrymple

Whatever happened in those more than one hundred years, from the time my great-great-great grandfather studied law to the time when my own father took his bar exam in 1989, I may never know. Perhaps it was just greed and the good, old-fashion corruption that comes with power. The Drexlers have moved from the fight for human rights to the fight for corporations and wealthy individuals. We file their taxes, write their contracts, clean up their messes. As I see it, we have become little more than glorified Public Relations reps — Gwenn Wright

A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses. A few examples will suffice. One of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of "population" as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. Governments perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a "people," but with a "population," with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation. — Michel Foucault

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely. — Jonathan Schell

In a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success. — Alison Lurie

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads. — William Hague

I have one great political idea ... That idea is an old one. It is widely and generally assented to; nevertheless, it is very generally trampled upon and disregarded. The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, "Righteousness exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people" [Proverbs 14:34]. This constitutes my politics - the negative and positive of my politics, and the whole of my politics ... I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind, that it may speedily be recognized and practiced upon by our people. — Frederick Douglass

Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly. — Paracelsus

I have found great power in taking my 'difference' out for a spin in a very public way. And usually, the worst, most personally embarrassing thing you imagine in your mind is often not anywhere near as bad in real life. — Aimee Mullins

For A to sit down and think, What shall I do? is commonplace; but to think what B ought to do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies a great number of human weaknesses at once. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel one's self a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society. — William Graham Sumner

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change. — George Packer

William Wilberforce ... w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life ... To forget such men is foolish. — J.I. Packer

The man who is worthy of being a leader of men will never complain about the stupidity of his helpers, the ingratitude of mankind nor the inappreciation of the public. These are all a part of the great game of life. To meet them and overcome them and not to go down before them in disgust, discouragement or defeat-that is the final proof of power — William J.H. Boetcker

In order to fulfill your quest -"
"Would you please not usw that word? It's so Robert E. Howard."
"Fine. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to the far ends of the earth ... ?"
"What? In these shoes? You must be joking."
"Crossing arid desserts and steaming jungles," the unicorn continued grimly, "fording mighty rivers and climbing snow-capped mountains-"
"I take it scheduled public transport isn't an option."
"Until you reach the Cradle of All Goblins, interrupt just once more and I wash my hooves of you, where you will encounter three trials. You must uncover the great truth that was hidden, you must right the ancestral wrong, and you must throw the fire into the ring of power. Only when you have done that -"
"Excuse me-"
"I warned you. Only when you have done that will you -"
"Excuse me," Benny said firmly, "bit I think you may have got the last one a bit turned round. Surely it should be throw the ring- — Tom Holt

Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any
commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they
tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which
they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready
talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage,
sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body
politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire
the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do
wrong to the republic. — Theodore Roosevelt

The constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those ... who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. — Franklin Pierce

By the aristocracy of finance must here be understood not merely the great loan promoters and speculators in public funds, in regard to whom it is immediately obvious that their interests coincide with the interests of the state power. All modern finance, the whole of the banking business, is interwoven in the closest fashion with public credit. — Karl Marx

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then is he caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. In our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times. — Robert Waterman McChesney

An aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. ("First-generation millionaires," Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, "give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.") — David Halberstam

The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out. — Joel Klein

This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation. — Carroll Quigley

Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity. — Barry Goldwater

And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention, which is the invention maybe of the world itself, and of nature, becomes the actual world - with cities, factories, public buildings, railroads, armies, dams, prisons, and movies - becomes the actuality. That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version. — Saul Bellow

Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in. — Edward Bernays

I thought if every teacher in every school in America--rural, village, city, township, church, public, or private, could inspire his pupils with all the power he had, if he could teach them as they had never been taught before to live, to work, to play, and to share, if he could put ambition into their brains and hearts, that would be a great way to make a generation of the greatest citizenry America ever had. — Jesse Stuart