Power Grab Quotes & Sayings

Everyone tells you to write what you know. It's the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, I've found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even. I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: 'Write What Scares You.' I've learned that tapping into the hard stuff - whether it's the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories - is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar. — Sarah Jio

I said, "Here's the deal. You're going to turn around and make sure we don't break our asses. I'll lean my back into you and take your lead. If I pull the trigger, it's going to be louder than hell on a Saturday night. Start running unless I grab you for extra fire power."
Teta's head bobbed and his sombrero dipped up and down. It was almost comical.
Almost.
"On a count of three, start walking."
"Let's just start now. — Hunter Shea

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. — Edward Abbey

Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, 'The church is not meant to be the master of the state.' We don't sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people's throats. — Jim Wallis

At bottom, politics was a hullabaloo of equal and individual competitors who would only be guaranteed to cooperate for one cause: the elimination of anybody who threatened to step out of line and grab too much power for himself. It follows that there was nothing resembling today's political parties ... Since the fall of the monarchy in 510 BC, Roman domestic politics had been a long, inconclusive class struggle, suspended for long periods by foreign wars. during one never-to-be-forgotten confrontation over a debt crisis in 493 BC, the entire population withdrew its labor (14). — Anthony Everitt

Grab reality by the balls and squeeze. — Janet Morris

This isn't one of your fairy tales, Fallon. This is real life, and in the real world you have to bust your ass for the happy ever after! When you find love, you take it. You grab it with both hands and you do everything in your power not to let it go. You can't just walk away from it and expect it to linger until you're ready. — Colleen Hoover

I really like when critics reveal their subjectivity and their humanity. I prefer it when people say nice things, but if they say not-nice things or things that are critical, I'm open to it and I accept it. I mean, I have to live with it. But I do think there's a dishonesty in not acknowledging that you're a person with an opinion. I think it's almost like a power grab. — Charlie Kaufman

Canada may be fast-forwarding, jump starting, into a new pattern, a model of communication linkages, a civilization that is more than a grab for power and dominance, a place that could channel the fires of the global wirings, where political alliances are subject to electrical ebb and flow, and the alchemical cultivations of imagination and perception, of the self, could precail of the ideology of capital. — B.W. Powe

So often what is really nothing short of a power grab is cast in the lofty language of 'progress. — Charles C.W. Cooke

Look, calling somebody in a wheelchair handicapable doesn't all of a sudden give them the power to climb stairs or the ability to grab Ho-Hos off the top shelf. — Glenn Beck

I'm an old man, and I'm no warrior. But during my years watching the rise and fall of those in power, I've learned that great men do not wait for their greatness to be recognized. If you wish to have the respect that you yearn for, then you must grab it and fight anyone who would say otherwise. If you wish to be a duke, you act like a duke. If you wish to be commander-in-chief, then act like a commander-in-chief."
This was not the sort of speech that a younger Mata Zyndu, certain that each man had a proper place assigned to him in the chain of being, would have believed in. But he realized with a start that his thoughts had changed.
Didn't Kuni Garu become a duke simply by acting as one? Didn't Huno Krima become king simply by declaring that he was one? He, Mata Zyndu, heir of the proudest name in all the Islands, was a greater warrior then either of them, and yet here he sat, unhappy that people had not come to beg him to lead them. — Ken Liu

Thoughts are just moving through consciousness. They have no power. Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief. — Adyashanti

When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Through intentional, deliberate, strategic prayer, you grab hold of Jesus and of everything He's already done on your behalf. It's how you tap into the power of heaven and watch it reverberate in your experiences. It's — Priscilla Shirer

So what are MHGs for? "They are tools of control used by purveyors of religion to cement their grip on power," says Pagel. "As soon as you have a large society generating lots of goods and services, this wealth can be put to use by someone who can grab the reins of power. The most immediate way to do this is to align yourself with a supreme deity and then make lists of things people can and cannot do, and these become 'morals' when applied to our social behaviour. — Anonymous

If you train a dog so that it only eats potatoes, and then after a while you offer it a chunk of meat, it'll still grab it because it's in its nature. And if you offer a man a bit of power, the same thing happens; he'll grab it. It's instinctive, because when it comes down to it, a man is basically a beast, and it's only later that a bit of decency gets smeared on top, the way you can spread dripping on your bread. — Erich Maria Remarque

So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in marketing. — Mark Forsyth

The narrower a man's intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. — Haruki Murakami

Look, if you train a dog so that it only eats potatoes, and then after a while you offer it a chunk of meat, it'll still grab it because it's in its nature. And if you offer a man a bit of power, the same thing happens; he'll grab it. It's instinctive, because when it comes down to it, a man is basically a beast, and it's only later that a bit of decency gets smeared on top, the way you spread dripping on your bread. — Erich Maria Remarque

Failing to induce adulation and submissiveness, the Angkar could only generate hatred. If concealment was the ultimate ploy for the leadership, it backfired and whipped up abhorrence in the
context of total revolution. This might be one of the explanations why repression assumed proportions unknown in other Communist countries. The mask of Angkar was a good tactic to grab
power, but it proved disastrous in government. — Pol Pot

Realized that this country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough and unscrupulous enough, and smart enough not to seem illegal, can grab hold of the entire government and have all the power and applause and salutes, all the money and palaces and willin' women they want. — Sinclair Lewis

"Wait." I grab his tie. Even through his shirt, I feel the strong curve of his collarbone beneath my fingers. It takes me back to how he looked in my bedroom: shirtless and perfect - wings spread high like those of some sort of celestial being - elegant power and pulsing light. Unabashed, unashamed, and confident. All the things that I crave to be.
My pulse beats rapidly against the bite on my neck. "There's something I want you to do, before Jeb wakes enough to know what's going on."
Morpheus kneels again. "What? You want I should kiss your ouchies?" The dark purr of his voice is more teasing than seductive. — A.G. Howard

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game. — Toni Morrison

With the WWF's clout in the PPV arena already entrenched, McMahon saw an opening. He told cable providers that he was going to air his own show - the Survivor Series - that night, and if any of them showed Starrcade instead, he wouldn't let them show WrestleMania IV. (Some retellings say that McMahon threatened that they'd never do business with the WWF again at all.) The cable companies by and large assented to McMahon's power grab, and the NWA took a huge financial hit. — David Shoemaker

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

Some people get what they want because they grab the power and swing it, and some people don't. — Dan Groat

When you find love, you take it. You grab it with both hands and you do everything in your power not to let it go. You can't just walk away from it and expect it to linger until you're ready for it. — Colleen Hoover

The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.
The guy who said that was a wise man. He knew what most men don't - Women are powerful creatures who should be handled with care, or they can become very, very dangerous. — Christina Dodd

Stop," a woman shouted. Everyone turned to see someone in a power suit and sensible pumps stomping out of the trees toward me. It was not Raquel. Raquel was running after her, swearing rapidly in Spanish and trying to grab Anne-Whatever Whatever.
"Wow, you are so not invited," I said. — Kiersten White

Federal system is at the heart of Indian democracy but UPA is adamant to break the nation by breaking the federal structure for their vested interests. It's a conspiracy to grab power through the backdoor ... — Narendra Modi

As writer pay declined and teacher pay also, we all started hanging out online. You could say online social networks cheapen our friendships or you could say we were cheapened by a plutocratic power grab and this is all we can afford. — Alexander Chee

Every power grab is the new base camp for the next power grab. — Mark Steyn

Divorce, she could see, would be like marriage - a power grab, as in who would be the dog, and who would be the owner of the dog. — Lorrie Moore

It's the most ambitious power grab I've ever witnessed. — Rick Santorum

In the Buddhist view, I depend on you for my existence. All things depend on each other, equally. Welcome to the doctrine of dependent origination. It's teeter-totter metaphysics - I arise, you arise; you arise, I arise. Forget about our presumed Maker, the divine machinist in the sky. Take a look at this moment right now. You are you because you are not something else; therefore, what you are not - the chair beneath you, the air in your lungs, these words - births you through an infinity of opposites. It's like the ultimate Dr. Seuss riddle: Without all the things that are not you, who would you be you to? There's no Higher Power in this system to grab on to for support; we are all already supporting each other. Pull a person or people the wrong way and you immediately redefine yourself in light of what you've done to your neighbor. — Shozan Jack Haubner