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Do you know what power is? These power quotes will help you understand what it means to be and feel powerful.
As a physical definition, power is a description of energy that is transferred or acts on other objects. In more human terms, it involves authority, control, and sometimes force.
It’s difficult to talk about those with power and not mention those without it. We constantly hear sayings about “taking back our power,” and “speaking truth to power,” but what do they really mean?
Does power corrupt? Is knowledge power? You decide after reading our list of power quotes to learn the positive and negative aspects of being powerful in the world today.
Top 10 Power Quotes
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Samuel Johnson
Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
Friedrich von Schiller
PinCharacter is power.
Booker T. Washington
Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
Charles Caleb Colton
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
PinThe sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.
Baltasar Gracian
The best people to have power are the ones who don’t want it.
Kit Harington
Quotes about Power
A simple search will show the definition of power depends on a field to give it context. Physicians, sociologists, or even your co-workers probably all define power differently based on their experiences.
These quotes about power offer different perspectives on what power is and isn’t so you can decide what it means to you.
Power is neither good nor evil. It just is. It’s what people do with power that matters.
C.J. Redwine
Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.
Charles de Gaulle
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
Mahatma Gandhi
Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.
Michel Foucault
What do all powerful men want? More power.
The Oracle,
The Matrix Reloaded
Power never takes a back step – only in the face of more power.
Malcolm X
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.
Gloria Steinem
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
Honoré de Balzac
PinPower is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Jonathan Swift
With great power there must also come great responsibility.
Stan Lee
The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
Mahatma Gandhi
Power? It’s like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
Harold MacMillan
And power without compassion is the worst kind of evil there is.
E.J. Patten
The greatest power is often simple patience.
E. Joseph Cossman
Power lacks moral or principles. It only has interests.
Horacio Castellanos Moya
A word after a word after a word is power.
Margaret Atwood
Power has always been one of those words that everybody uses without necessarily being able to define satisfactorily.
Dennis Hume Wrong,
The Modern Condition
Nobody gives you power, boy. Real power is something you TAKE.
Jock Ewing, Dallas
PinPower is when you have every justification to kill someone, and then you don’t.
Oskar Shindler
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Henry Kissinger
Selfishness is weakness. But loving and caring for others is a position of power beyond anything we can possibly imagine.
Joel Osteen
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.
Alice Walker
Power may be defined as the production of intended effects. It is thus a quantitative concept: given two men with similar desires, if one achieves all the desires that the other achieves, and also others, he has more power than the other.
Bertrand Russell
We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Do the thing and you will have the power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Blaise Pascal
Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.
Napoleon Bonaparte
PinIn order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.
Leo Tolstoy
The most important thing about power is to make sure you don’t have to use it.
Edwin Land
He chose money over power. Money is the Mc-mansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference.
Frank Underwood,
House of Cards
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
Peter Drucker
The depositary of power is always unpopular.
Benjamin Disraeli
Knowledge Is Power Quotes
Knowledge is power only when put to use – and then only when the use made of it is constructive.
David J. Schwartz,
The Magic of Thinking Big
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
Napoleon Hill
Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
Bruce Lee
The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
Francis Bacon
The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
Albert Einstein
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
Eric Hoffer
PinIt is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.
Charles Caleb Colton
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson
The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.
Walter Savage Landor
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.
Ossie Davis
If knowledge is power – then a god… am… I.
Jim Carrey, Batman Forever
Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
Ayn Rand
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power.
Edmund Burke
Power and Control
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
John Adams
Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.
Woodrow Wilson
The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.
Milton Friedman
Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others.
Beth Revis,
Across the Universe
PinMoney is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.
Andrew Jackson
The less power a man has, the more he likes to use it.
J. Petit-Senn
Power really is a test of character. In the hands of a person of integrity, it is of tremendous benefit; in the hands of a tyrant, it causes terrible destruction.
John C. Maxwell
All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.
Walter Raleigh
Power doesn’t always roar…The art of exerting power is an art used in doses – the more hidden it is the more effective.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.
Max Lerner
Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, makes slaves of men, and of the human frame a mechanized automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
There is power over human beings and power over dead matter or non-human forms of life.
Bertrand Russell
Love of power, in its widest sense, is the desire to be able to produce intended effects upon the outer world, whether human or non-human.
Bertrand Russell
Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.
Benjamin Disraeli
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
George Orwell,
1984
The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use; of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.
John F. Kennedy
PinPower, when invested in the hands of knaves or fools, generally is the source of tyranny.
Charlotte Charke
It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.
Coretta Scott King
No power can be maintained when it is only represented by hypocrites.
Friedrich Nietzsche
You see what power is holding someone else’s fear in your hand and showing it to them.
Amy Tan,
The Kitchen God’s Wife
The one thing a creator can bring to the table when everybody else has all the money and power is centeredness and the ability to walk away. Never sit at a table you can’t walk away from.
Joss Whedon
In a democratic nation, power must be linked with responsibility, and obliged to defend and justify itself within the framework of the general good.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Extensive powers not exercised as far as was necessary have, I believe, scarcely ever failed to ruin the possessor.
George Washington
The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.
Charles Horton Cooley
Power Corrupts Quotes
Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.
William Gaddis
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
George Bernard Shaw
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
Admiral Chester W. Nimmitz
PinPower intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers.
James F. Byrnes
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin
Power is neither good nor evil, but its user makes it so.
Erin Hunter
Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
Adlai Stevenson
Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.
George Washington
People with power always take advantage of those without power.
Christopher Pike
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
Frank Herbert
Authority, power, and wealth do not change a man; they only reveal him
Ali ibn Abi Talib
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
Edward Abbey
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
John Quincy Adams
PinAbuse of power isn’t limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant.
Clint Eastwood
Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
Edmund Burke
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
Robert Frost
Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.
Dean Koontz
Power is more safely retained by cautious than by severe councils.
Tacitus
Power is a dangerous thing. Be careful that you don’t abuse it or let it make a tyrant of you.
Louisa May Alcott
There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.
William Henry Harrison
Power is dangerous. It corrupts the best and attracts the worst. Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up.
Ragnar Lothbrok
Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.
Marian Wright Edelman
Personal Power
The first step to having power is the realization that it comes from within. Do you have power over yourself? Over your thoughts?
Personal power is more than discipline, confidence, or determination. These qualities stem from it, but personal power also comes from the actions, choices, and ideas that lead to strong qualities.
Many people have confidence, but lack the power to change or the power to forgive. Personal power allows us to feel powerful in ourselves and project that into the world.
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
Epictetus
Personal power is more of an attitude or state of mind than an attempt to maneuver or control others.
Cotvos
He hath no power that hath not power to use.
Philip James Bailey
PinWherever there is power there is age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.
Henrik Ibsen
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Plato
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
Alice Walker
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
Seneca The Younger
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu
Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
Elie Wiesel
The greatness of the man’s power is the measure of his surrender.
William Booth
What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Aristotle
You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Marcus Aurelius
What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
PinBeware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Mary Shelley
The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions.
Paolo Coelho
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
Margaret Thatcher
There is a source of power in each of us that we don’t realize until we take responsibility.
Diane Nash
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
W.H. Murray
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
Epictetus
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
Winston Churchill
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
Andrew Carnegie
Power is strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. It is being able to place a cicle of power at your own feet and not take power from someone else’s circle.
Lynn Andrews
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
William Wordsworth
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
Robert Anthony
Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.
Condoleezza Rice
We hope this collection of power quotes gave you a better idea of what power means, and what it means for you.
Should you be fortunate enough to be in a powerful position in society, your career, or even simply your household – remember the lessons these words on power contain. Don’t let power corrupt you or go to your head.
Instead, realize positions of power are a chance to do good and bring good to others. That’s what we think true power is, but we’d lvoe to hear your thoughts in the comments too.