Gentle Power Quotes

Compassion is the greatest transforming power of the Universe. It is the most humble and the most gentle power of the creation. ~ Amit Ray

I find freedom to be the most important issue facing any human being today, because without freedom, then life is pointless. The more dependent you become on centralized power, the more easily you are lead around. ~ Russell Means

The corporations and the media don't need power; they already have it. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. ~ John Stuart Mill

True understanding involves sincere honesty and holistic, deep listening without the political corruption of evil power players. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my book K.H. trilogy ~ Angelica Hopes

He smiles.
It's a blinding, white-toothed smile.
A push-me-over-the-edge-of-the-love-cliff smile.
And before I can say a word in protest, he's got my hand and is dragging me through the carnival.
Note to self: Do not stare directly at his smile. It holds special powers.
Also: Do not kiss him. His mouth is definitely the source of his power. ~ Jillian Dodd

Sweeter than the perfume of roses is a reputation for a kind, charitable, unselfish nature; a ready disposition to do to others any good turn in your power. ~ Orison Swett Marden

I dwell mostly upon the religious aspects, because I believe it is the religious people who are to be relied upon in this Anti-Slavery movement. Do not misunderstand my railing - do not class me with those who despise religion - do not identify me with the infidel. I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. I love that religion which sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of those who have fallen among thieves.
By all the love I bear such a Christianity as this, I hate that of the Priest and the Levite, that with long-faced Phariseeism goes up to Jerusalem to worship and leaves the bruised and wounded to die. I despise that religion which can carry Bibles to the heathen on the other side of the globe and withhold them from the heathen on this side - which can talk about human rights yonder and traffic in human flesh here.... I love that which makes its votaries do to others as they would that others should do to them. I hope to see a revival of it - thank God it is revived. I see revivals of it in the absence of the other sort of revivals. I believe it to be confessed now, that there has not been a sensible man converted after the old sort of way, in the last five years. ~ Frederick Douglass

They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it. Then ~ Octavia E. Butler

Every relation between forms in a painting is to some degree adaptable to the painter's purpose. This is not the case with photography. Composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography. The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting. I have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. The choice is not between photographing X and Y: but between photographing at X moment or at Y moment. The objects recorded in any photograph (from the most effective to the most commonplace) carry approximately the same weight, the same conviction. What varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and presence. A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves, and presents a moment taken from a continuum. The only decision (the still photographer) can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning race-horse to the race it has run. ~ John Berger

People either buy nuclear power, nuclear reactors from outside, and don't train their own men, or they just don't go into nuclear power at all, they are so afraid of it. ~ Abdus Salam

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. ~ Thomas Jefferson

In the authoritarian philosophy the concept of equality does not exist. The authoritarian character may sometimes use the word equality either conventionally or because it suits his purposes. But it has no real meaning or weight for him, since it concerns something outside the reach of his emotional experience. For him the world is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of his sado-masochistic strivings, he experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity. Differences, whether of sex or race, to him are necessarily signs of superiority or inferiority. A difference which does not have this connotation is unthinkable to him. ~ Erich Fromm

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall. ~ Charles Babbage

Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed. ~ J.G. Ballard

The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it. ~ Edwin Land

Like so many other pathological personalities in positions of power a million years ago, he might do almost anything on impulse, feeling nothing much. The logical explanations for his actions, invented at leisure, always came afterwards. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Gentle reader, did you ever feel yourself snubbed? Did you ever, when thinking much of your own importance, find yourself suddenly reduced to a nonentity? Such was Eleanor's feeling now. ~ Anthony Trollope

An actor must communicate his author's given message
comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring. ~ Eleanor Robson Belmont

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active ~ Assata Shakur

As we practice these disciplines, it's of paramount importance that we keep two truths in mind. First, the disciplines themselves are not the source of spiritual power. Only the Holy Spirit is. The disciplines are his instruments to transmit his power. Second, the practice of the disciplines doesn't earn us favor with God or secure his blessings. Christ has already done that through his sinless life and sin-bearing death for us. That's why the grace we need to live the Christian life is "in Christ Jesus." It bears repeating: we must be on our guard to avoid seeing the practice of the disciplines as either the source of power we need or the meritorious cause of receiving the power. ~ Anonymous

I think, actually I know that it's overwhelmingly possible for men to conduct such atrocities as to kill a man in cold blood, to burn towns and to parade with the the dead on the tips of their swords. People who think they are doing something for the good of all are the most dangerous and stirs their intent deeper. There might have been a time when I thought differently and I would have answered with a quick no but that time had long passed. Do I think it's in human nature to be violent and to succumb to it? Sure I do. It's to justify it, that I think is inhuman. ~ Celia Mcmahon

You do not believe in the magic and power of this book only because you cannot comprehend that it is possible. The lack of faith of your part does not make the power less capable or less real...You only have to open up your mind to the possibilities. There is a sea of power out there, all around us. It doesn't wait until someone believes in order for it to exist. It just does."
-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Choosing a gentle reply doesn't mean you're weak; it actually means you possess a rare and godly strength. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

Power is seldom innocent, and envy is the yokefellow of eminence. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

He had thrilled to his own power only in the throes of sex, when he didn't have the presence of mind to know that pleasure wouldn't last forever, and in the flush of freedom, when he was too innocent to know he wasn't free.
Now he seized the power that came from that collision of sex with freedom called love. ~ Steve Erickson

I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me become a Communist, but what had attracted me to the movement more than anything, dazzled me, was the feeling (real or apparent) of standing near the wheel of history. For in those days we actually did decide the fate of men and events, especially at the universities; in those early years there were very few Communists on the faculty, and the Communists in the student body ran the universities almost single-handed, making decisions on academic staffing, teaching reform, and the curriculum. The intoxication we experienced is commonly known as the intoxication of power, but (with a bit of good will) I could choose less severe words: we were bewitched by history; we were drunk with the thought of jumping on its back and feeling it beneath us; admittedly, in most cases the result was an ugly lust for power, but (as all human affairs are ambiguous) there was still (and especially, perhaps, in us, the young), an altogether idealistic illusion that we were inaugurating a human era in which man (all men) would be neither outside history, nor under the heel of history, but would create and direct it. ~ Milan Kundera

The ultimate source of happiness is not money and power, but warm-heartedness ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Fayza leaned in, squinting, as if she didn't hear me correctly: one of the library of power moves that adults used to signal that other adults were fucking idiots. ~ Daryl Gregory

Memories of shame have greater reserves of power to haunt than even memories of love. ~ Glenn Haybittle

Information is power. Information empowers. Information is powerless if not applied. ~ Saji Ijiyemi

Sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence - nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds ~ Charles Dickens

When we meet someone with a deeper spiritual insight, we think God cares more for them than for us. Yet surely God has the right to make use of one of His creatures to give His other children the food they need. He had this right in the days of Pharaoh, for, in Holy Scripture, He told him: "And therefore have I raised thee, that I may show My power in thee, and My name may be spoken of throughout all the earth." Centuries have passed since He uttered these words and His ways have not changed: He has always used human beings to accomplish His work among souls. ~ John Beevers

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. ~ Blaise Pascal

A warrior cuts out all unnecessary acts; in this way he saves his personal power. ~ Théun Mares

I have no illusions that my work can rouse the masses to create change, because literature simply doesn't have that power anymore in my country, if it does anywhere. But I do hope that it can be read by those who are in positions to create change, or that it can at least be part of that dialogue. ~ Miguel Syjuco

The only thing that powerful men feared above all else was a loss of that power. ~ Tish Thawer

Before Sonia Sotomayor's appointment, a total of 110 justices had been named to the United States Supreme Court since its 1789 creation. All but 4 of these justices were white men, reflecting the traditional power base of the nation. Beginning with African American Thurgood Marshall in 1967, the groundbreakers navigated the public expectations and internal rituals of a tradition bound institution. ~ Joan Biskupic

Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unit of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas, and constantly changing scenes. ~ Edward S. Jordan

If nuclear power makes them dangerous, a sincere friendship through trade will be many times better than an insecure overlordship, based on the hated supremacy of a foreign spiritual power, which, once it weakens ever so slightly, can only fall entirely and leave nothing substantial behind except an immortal fear and hate. ~ Isaac Asimov