Passages about power and authority

A prince who wants to keep his position must learn how not to be good, and must use that knowledge or hold it back as necessity requires.

Because men are ungrateful and break their bonds the moment it profits them, fear, which a prince controls, is a safer foundation than love, which he does not.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.

And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory.

Solon tells Croesus that no one can be called happy while he still lives, since a god can throw down the most fortunate man at the end, and only a finished life can be judged.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

I am very conscious that I am not wise at all; what then does the god mean?

I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.

Glaucon imagines a ring that makes its wearer invisible and asks whether any man, just or unjust, would keep his hands off what he wanted.

Among the new objects that drew my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of conditions.

A power rises above the citizens, absolute, detailed, regular, provident and mild. It would be like a father's authority if, like that, its object were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks instead to keep them permanently in childhood.

Many things are terrible and wonderful, and nothing is more terrible and wonderful than man.

I was not born to share in hatred, but to share in love.

Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.

Tiresias tells Oedipus that his wisdom is dreadful when it brings its possessor no profit, and refuses at first to say what he knows.

Dionysus opens the play by naming himself, saying he has come to Thebes disguised as a man because his mother's sisters denied that Zeus fathered him and called her death a punishment for a lie.

Tiresias tells Pentheus that the new god gives wine, which relieves men of pain and gives them sleep, and that a city gains nothing by fighting a power it cannot see.

The real cause I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.

For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb.

For it is not histories that I am writing, but lives.

A small thing, a phrase or a joke, often shows character better than battles with thousands of dead and the greatest sieges.

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of communism.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity.

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

Man is by nature a political animal.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Two loves, then, have made two cities.

Remove justice, and what is a kingdom but a great band of robbers?

Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!

You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language!

Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe

That to the height of this great argument / I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body; which means nothing other than that he will be forced to be free.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

They make a desert and call it peace.

The histories of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero, were falsified through cowardice while they flourished, and composed, when they fell, under the influence of still rankling hatreds.

In every republic there are two different inclinations, that of the people and that of the great men, and all the laws that are made in favour of liberty are born of the disunion between them.

For as good customs have need of laws to maintain them, so laws have need of good customs in order to be observed.

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Supposing truth is a woman, what then?

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air.

I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on th' other.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day!

Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.

The True is the whole.

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge.

There is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming; the doer is merely a fiction added to the deed.

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

A great ox stands upon my tongue.

Zeus, who sets mortals on the road to understanding, who made it law that by suffering they shall learn.

The mother is not the parent of what is called her child, but the nurse of the newly sown seed. The one who mounts is the parent.

This is my ruling: a tie in the votes acquits the man.

There was Chaos and Night and black Erebus at first, and wide Tartarus, and no earth or air or sky; and in the boundless bosom of Erebus black-winged Night brought forth a wind-egg.

What do you want to call the place? Something grand, out of the clouds, plenty of puff to it. Cloudcuckooland?

I would rather that my lyre were out of tune and discordant, and that the chorus I led should be, and that most men should disagree with me, than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict myself.

Nature herself shows that it is just for the better man to have more than the worse, and the more powerful than the less.

The foundation of justice is good faith, that is, steadiness and truthfulness in what is said and agreed.

There are two ways of settling a dispute: by discussion and by force. Since the first is proper to man and the second to beasts, we should resort to the second only when the first is not available.

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind, for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see.

Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us to the point where we can endure neither our vices nor their cure.

My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms.

Her limbs grew heavy and numb, a thin bark closed over her breast, her hair became leaves, her arms branches; her feet, so swift a moment before, stuck fast in sluggish roots.

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

All hope abandon, ye who enter in.

Heresy is a spiritual matter which no iron can strike, no fire burn, no water drown.

The soul is not under the authority of Caesar; he can neither teach nor guide it, neither kill it nor give it life, neither bind it nor loose it.

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness.

What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday.

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.

Cover that bosom, which I cannot endure to look on. Such things damage the soul and stir up sinful thoughts.

There is a great difference between hypocrisy and devotion.

In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

The history of the world is nothing but the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

Call me Ishmael.

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

It was unearthly, and the men were. No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it, this suspicion of their not being inhuman.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD. And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

Behold what I, a god, suffer at the hands of gods.

In one short word, learn the whole of it: every art that mortals have comes from Prometheus.

We must give up sex altogether. Why are you turning away? Where are you going? Why are you biting your lips and shaking your heads? Why have you gone pale?

First we wash the fleece to get the muck out. You should do the same with the city: beat out the scoundrels, pick off the burrs, card the ones who clump together for office, and comb the whole lot into one basket.

Is it not a pleasure to learn and to repeat or practise from time to time what has been learnt? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

Of things some are in our power, and others are not. In our power are opinion, movement towards a thing, desire, aversion; and in a word, whatever are our own acts. Not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices, and in a word, whatever are not our own acts.

Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.

The secret of empire was now revealed, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome.

By general consent he would have been judged capable of ruling, if only he had never ruled.

Roland is brave and Oliver is wise, and both are men of amazing courage.

Companion Roland, sound your horn of ivory. Charles will hear it and the army will turn back. Roland answers: God forbid that my kinsmen should be blamed for me, or that sweet France should fall into disgrace.

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, / Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, / Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, / The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde.

Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, / Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, / Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; / Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.

You are very fortunate, Father, to be able to say that, for otherwise I should have thought it a great sin.

She was so innocent that when I asked her what was troubling her, she answered that the kitten had died.

Marriage, Agnes, is no laughing matter. The duties of a wife are strict, and the position I am raising you to is not one of pleasure and liberty.

The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God.

Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretence of religion.

Political liberty is not the power of doing what we please. Liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

The most pressing interest of the ruler, as also his most indispensable duty, is therefore to watch over the observation of the laws of which he is the minister and on which his whole authority is founded.

You need me, for I am rich and you are poor. Let us therefore make an agreement: I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you give me what little you have left for the trouble I shall take in commanding you.

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare.

In Italy six hundred and forty; in Germany two hundred and thirty-one; a hundred in France, in Turkey ninety-one; but in Spain, in Spain already one thousand and three.

Give me your hand, and say yes. It is not far; let us go from here.

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.

Society is indeed a contract, but it is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

I have observed that the philosophers, in order to insinuate their polluted atheism into young minds, systematically flatter all their passions.

What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.

The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.

If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.

I often think I have only one talent in the world, and that is a talent for boring myself to death.

For once in my life I want to have power over a human destiny.

If I go through the fire I shall go through it to their hearts for ever and ever. And so, God be with me!

You promised me my life; but you lied. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers.