Not Abusing Power Quotes & Sayings

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it. — Joss Whedon

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out. — Jane Austen

When you actively engage in gradually refining yourself, you retreat from your lazy ways of covering yourself or making excuses. Instead of feeling a persistent current of low-level shame, you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation. — Epictetus

There is no bigger sin than men cruelly abusing their power to keep their own nation in servitude, he said, and he did not need to explain who the sinners were. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Day after day, anxiety spun its web around my thoughts and spread to all corners of my heart. — Adeline Yen Mah

Even today there still exists in the South
and in certain areas of the North
the license that our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against minorities. Where, in the days of slavery, social license and custom placed the unbridled power of the whip in the hands of overseers and masters, today
especially in the southern half of the nation
armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, main or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slaveowner. If one doubts this conclusion, let him search the records and find how rarely in any southern state a police officer has been punished for abusing a Negro. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Let him get stoned, since everybody must. — Jonathan Lethem

Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power. — David Ricardo

In Britain, the big supermarkets dominate our food chain. British supermarkets are some of the best in the world at controlling, manipulating and delivering cheap food. — Arthur Potts Dawson

In an era where the White House is abusing power, is excusing and authorizing torture and is spying on American citizens, I find Judge [Samuel] Alito's support for an all-powerful executive branch to be genuinely troubling. — Samuel Alito

The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it. — Chris Bell

The earth will support anything that supports life. What I have found after a soul retrieval is that one cannot "numb out" anymore. Each and every one of us must make personal and planetary decisions to stop abusing life. Whether a person a has to give up an abusive relationship, take a more active political role, or increase awareness of how we continue to abuse our environment, we all now have to be responsible. Being responsible means responding to what is needed. We find a need to wake up and change our reality to a stance of power ... — Sandra Ingerman

May we reach out to one another in love, in faith and in kindness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It's not about HTML 5 vs Flash. They're mutually beneficial. The more important question is the freedom of choice on the web. — Kevin Lynch

Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have [sic] had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion. — David Ricardo

Our brains resist change, they rail against it, our amygdala will always want the safe bet. But are the obstacles truly insurmountable? Is it a brick wall? Or is it a sliding door, which, once you decide to approach it, begins to swish open? Because even though our brains prefer safety in the short run, in the long run they crave meaning, challenge, and novelty. — Barbara Bradley Hagerty

We operate under the notion that America actually belongs to us Christians, and that we belong to it. We believe that the church and the state can make beautiful music together if only they would cooperate. We believe that the preaching of the Kingdom of God and the rallying around the red, white, and blue are always compatible. We believe the lie of the Serpent that we can hold to the sacrificial, life-giving, peace-pursuing, cheek-turning way of Christ and hold to the poisonous, domineering, power-hungry, least-of-these-abusing systems of the Empire. But this is impossible. — Ronnie McBrayer

The true marriage movie involving in-laws and children is a story about how marriage is directly affected by external characters who impact the central relationship in various ways. — Jeanine Basinger

Food is a great metaphor for the consolidation of corporate power in the hands of very few, who are mostly interested in their own profits and not the wellbeing of the animals they're slaughtering, or the land and the water they're using or abusing, or the workforce they're exploiting or even the people eating it. — Robert Kenner

How do you overcome the negative karmas and problems and misery that occur to people who abuse power? You stop abusing power. — Frederick Lenz

A real man wouldn't lay a finger on a woman. He treats his partner with respect, love and support. Men are physically stronger and have no place abusing that power. Everyone has problems, and arguments happen, but that's when a real man uses his intelligence to talk it out. — Matt Lanter

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

White supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief or the investment in the inherent superiority of some, while others are believed to be innately inferior. And it doesn't demand the individual participation of the singular bigot. It is a machine operating in perpetuity, because it doesn't demand that somebody be in place driving. — Michael Eric Dyson

People abusing their power makes me see red. — Neil Jackson

This is the part where you apologize to me," I said, getting angry. "You guys screwed up and this is where you make me feel better about it." I like to use this tactic on people. It can work. When someone is being rude, abusing their power, or not respecting you, just call them out in a really obvious way. Say, "I can't understand why you are being rude because you are the concierge and this is the part of the evening where the concierge helps me." Act like they are an actor who has forgotten what part they are playing. It brings the attention back to them and gives you a minute to calm down so you don't do something silly like burst into tears or break their stupid fucking glasses. — Amy Poehler

Put him, blindfold, into a closed room anywhere in the world, and he could tell if Sybilla was with him. It had to do, perhaps, with her scent. To him, it was more: a breath from the sweetness and peace of his childhood; a sense of light; of understanding; of loving amusement; an air from the flower-filled walls of pairidza.

Nothing, even now, took from him that first moment as he stood on her threshold. Until the second moment came, and with it his years and his memory. He closed the door, and then turned calmly and looked for her. — Dorothy Dunnett

There are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth. — Ted Nugent

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened. — Madame De Stael

I just desperately wanted to be happy again in a way that wasn't forced. I wanted to feel like I accomplished something. I did this. I finished this record. I'm doing all the promo. I'm doing everything that I said I was going to do. I really wanted to be happy and normalized and I was tired of people saying I was volatile. I'm not. I'm a pretty normal person. I have problems like anyone else but I've worked so hard to be OK and I don't think that I gave myself enough credit for that. — Michael Angelakos