5,584 Quotes About Power

When you have power, money and prestige, you think you have something, but you have nothing.

Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

Writers are in many ways like demi-gods. With one stroke of a pen they can give life to a character, or strike them from existence, with nary a twinge of grief at their passing.

The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the former . . .

One is always a good master when one isn’t the master

The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

If you make peace without defense power,then you should be really ready to be ruled.

Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words have the ability to change our lives simply by being next to each other.