Source of Power
“I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”
Revelations 22:13
“Character is power.”
Booker T. Washington
“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but cannot communicate and teach it.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddartha
“Neither experience nor science has given man the idea of immortality…. The idea of immortality rises from the very depths of his soul—he feel, he sees, he knows he is immortal.”
Francois Guizot, General History of Civilization
“He burns as fire, shines as the sun / Falls as bountiful rain, blows as the wind; / Matter he, and earth, and god, / both false and true / is He, immortal too. / One god there is hidden in every creature, the Self of all creatures, and pervading, abiding in all, overseer of Karma, sole Witness, Overseer, beyond the Gunas.”
The Upanishads, Sueta Upanishad
“Death cannot kill what never dies.”
Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation
“I know that man cannot live by his own will alone. With his soul, he must search for the sources of the power of life. It is life we want.”
D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix II
“Words lead to deeds…. They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.”
Raymond Carver, No Heroics, Please
Influence
“God is dead: but considering the state of the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.”
Friedrich Wilheim Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom
“Hold childhood in reverence and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Give nature time to work before you take over her tasks, lest you interfere with her method.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau
“Against the superiority of another the only remedy is love.”
Goethe
“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. To be taken seriously depends entirely upon what is being said.”
Hubert Humphrey, speech 4/23/1965
“I know how to listen when clever men are talking. That is the secret of what you call my influence.”
Hermann Sudermann, The Joy of Living
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
Warren G. Bennis, University of Maryland symposium, 1/21/1988
“Be wiser than other men, but do not tell them so.”
Philllip Dormer Stanhope, Letters of Lord Chesterfield to His Son
Knowledge is Power
“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Old Age
“Knowledge is power they say. Knowledge is not only power it is good fun.”
E.M. Forster, Commonplace Book
“Knowing that you know, / be serene also, like a mountain; / and do not be distressed by misfortune. / Knowledge without serenity / is an unlit candle; / together they are honeycomb; / honey without wax is a noble thing; / wax without honey is only fit for burning.”
Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth
“…Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence…It endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which spring from the cheerful willingness to let life take the forms it will.”
Alistair Cooke, “The Art of Curiosity,” Vogue, January 1953
“One often hears the remark ‘He talks too much,’ but when did anyone last hear the criticism ‘He listens too much’” Norman R. Augustine, Augustine’s Laws (1987)
Free Will
“No one who has had a unique experience with prayer has a right to withhold it from others.”
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, “The Power of Prayer,” Reader’s Digest, August 1955
“What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision making.”
Laurence Steinberg and Ann Levine, You and Your Adolescence (1990)
Pitfalls and Abuses of Power
“No one is fit to be trusted with power…. No one…. Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he’s capable of. If he does not know it, he is not fit to govern others. And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate.”
C.P. Snow, The Light and the Dark, 1961
“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
President John F. Kennedy, at dedication of Robert Frost Library, Amherst College, 10/26/1963
“We (women) are not more moral, we are only less corrupted by power.”
Gloria Steinem, The New York Times, 8/26/1971
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
Edmund Burke, speech 1771
“My final warning to you is always pay for your own drinks… All the scandals in the world of politics today have their cause in the despicable habit of swallowing free drinks.”
Y. Yakigawa, president of Kyoto University, 6/13/1954
