Power Ratio Quotes

Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries. Let's say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might than the other. How often do you think the bigger side wins? Most of us, I think, would put that number at close to 100 percent. A tenfold difference is a lot. But the actual answer may surprise you. When the political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft did the calculation a few years ago, what he came up with was 71.5 percent. Just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins.
Arreguin-Toft then asked the question slightly differently. What happens in wars between the strong and the weak when the weak side […] refuses to fight the way the bigger side wants to fight, using unconventional or guerilla tactics? The answer: in those cases, the weaker party's winning percentage climbs from 28.5 percent to 63.6 percent. To put that in perspective, the United Stats' population is ten times the size of Canada's. If the two countries went to war and Canada chose to fight unconventionally, history would suggest that you ought to put your money on Canada. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Desire for power is a kind of greed indulged by the unfulfilled ~ Michael Foley

Lord, your presence lifts us, your grace amazes us, your power overwhelms us, and your love excites us. No matter what we bring with us - hurts, sorrows, self- satisfaction, bitterness, or joyful praise - you always receive us as we are and transform what we bring and fill us with gifts of your mercy. Amen. ~ David Clowes

It's tragic that most of us spend our private lives paradoxically thinking something is watching us and permanently disapproving. We say we believe in benevolent deities but smear them with hate and the power to smite. We see sin everywhere, when the only sin is when we forget to treat each other with respect. That is the sad secret that makes the Universe vulnerable. ~ Sean J Halford

Live in the Acts of the Apostles, and every day you will see some miracle worked by the power of the living God. ~ Smith Wigglesworth

Concerning trees and leaves ... there's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air. ~ Annie Dillard

The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against, every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love. ~ Aminatta Forna

Only a people trained to accept being ruled by a violent power structure can really question someone's right and need to forcefully defend herself against oppression. ~ Peter Gelderloos

I know many filmmakers, and shooting in IMAX is challenging. Filmmakers love the vividness and power of those big images. ~ Nina Jacobson

When we have a circle of friends, we have more fun. We get more done, we feel and are stronger, and we really do celebrate the power of our 'us.' ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

The point is less what we choose than that we have the power to make a choice. ~ Gloria Steinem

conversations each year with fellow participants confirmed my hunch: the powerful are experiencing increasingly greater limits on their power. The reactions to my probing always pointed in the same direction: power is becoming more feeble, transient, and constrained. ~ Moises Naim

It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these great reformations i.e., emancipation of slaves and settlement of the Virginia constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We worship ... the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can't even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176] ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Nature generally struggles against this treatment for a while, until her powers seem in a great measure exhausted, when she quietly yields to the power of the art. ~ Robert Fortune

The holiest of Christians, and those who understand best the gospel of Christ, find in themselves a constant inclination to look to the power of the creature, instead of looking to the power of God and the power of God alone. ~ Charles Spurgeon

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.
There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power.
All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told. ~ Robin Hobb

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit - and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame ~ Jeff VanderMeer

The more people challenge us, the more power we gain. We become stronger not under the tiny raindrops but under the huge hailstone! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Women are constantly underestimated in our power, our reach, our collective pull. ~ Julianna Baggott

Language is power ... Language can be used as a means of changing reality. ~ Adrienne Rich

Warren Berger's book is a cure for a disease in large enterprises. A More Beautiful Question provides a framework to help leaders ask the most important questions - which is one of the most fundamental characteristics of a great leader - while sharing inspiring stories to show the incredible power of this concept. ~ Jim Stengel

When you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you. ~ Ryan Holiday

Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega?
-No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so. ~ Isabel Allende

So desensitized to violence they've forgotten it's to have purpose. Violence is a tool. It is meant to shock. To change. Instead, they normalize and celebrate it. And create a culture of exploitation where they are so entitled to sex and power that when they are told no, they pull a sword and do as they like. ~ Pierce Brown

fairy godmother says you will feel like you've made a mess of things, even when it's not your fault. you will feel hopeless. you will feel helpless. you will consider giving up. it is then you must remember that you alone have the power to clean it back up again. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Being healthy in steadfastness is power need in our day of entitlement. Entitlement thinks it deserves what it receives, but steadfastness is instead thankful for what it receives because it teaches appreciation through challenge. ~ Eric Mason

I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power. ~ Mark Rippetoe

The purpose of a spirit filled life is to demonstrate the supernatural power of our living God so that the unsaved multitudes will abandon their dead gods to call upon the name of The Lord and be delivered. ~ T.L. Osborn

If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can't avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and nightmares that do, as well. ~ Kawai Strong Washburn

Gell-Mann and Ne'eman discovered that one such simple Lie group, called "special unitary group of degree 3," or SU(3), was particularly well suited for the "eightfold way"-the family structure the particles were found to obey. The beaty of the SU(3) symmetry was revealed in full glory via its predictive power. Gell-Mann and Ne'eman showed that if the theory were to hold true, a previously unknown tenth member of a particular family of nine particles had to be found. The extensive hunt for the missing particle was conducted in an accelerator experiment in 1964 at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island. Yuval Ne'eman told me some years later that, upon hearing that half of the data had already been scrutinized without discovering the anticipated particle, he was contemplating leaving physics altogether. Symmetry triumphed at the end-the missing particle (called the omega minus) was found, and it had precisely the properties predicted by the theory. ~ Mario Livio

In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power. The unwise destroy themselves in resistance. The skillful accept events, take strong hold of them and direct them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Mag Rogan and I stood on the edge of a cliff. Below us, the ground plunged so far down that it was as if the planet itself had ended at our feet. The wind tugged at my hair. He was wearing those dark pants again and nothing else. The hard muscle corded his torso, fueled by an overpowering, almost savage strength. Not the mindless brutality of a common thug or the cruel power of an animal, but an intelligent, stubborn, human strength. It was everywhere: in the set of his broad shoulders, in the turn of his head on a muscular neck, in the tilt of his square jaw. He turned to me and his whole body tightened, the muscles flexing and hardening, his hands ready to grip and crush, his eyes alert, missing nothing, and blazing with the brilliant electric blue of magic. I could picture him getting his sword and walking alone onto the drawbridge to defend his castle against a horde of invaders with that exact look on his face.
He was terrifying, and I wanted to run my hands down that chest and feel the hard ridges of his abs. I was some special kind of idiot.
Magic roiled about him, ferocious and alive, a pet monster with vicious teeth. He moved toward me, bringing it with him. "Tell me about Adam Pierce."
I reached over and put my hand on his chest. His skin was burning hot. The muscle tensed under my fingers. An eager electric shiver ran through me. I wanted to lean against that chest and kiss the underside of that jaw, tasting his sweat on my tongue. I wanted him to l ~ Ilona Andrews

Every time we're about to criticize someone for what we think they did wrong, let's first remember to thank them for the things they did right. And to mean it; to sincerely affirm them. Then, if there's still a problem that needs to be shared, it will come from a completely different energy
and actually be heard! ~ Marianne Williamson

The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it? ~ Kim Edwards

Approach the universe with Tao, And evil will have no power. Not that evil is not powerful, But its power will not be used to harm others. ~ Laozi

No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures. ~ Seneca The Younger

Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Negatives only have power over you when you react to them ~ John Kehoe

Most of my own power has come from excellence, not advocacy. My approach is to say to myself, 'Just do better. Be better.' That's not to say there's no bias, no sexism. There is, and it's not good. It's just that for me, the solution of doing better is far more empowering than lamenting one's circumstances. ~ Megyn Kelly

He who defines himself can't know who he really is.
He who has power over others can't empower himself. ~ Lao Tzu

Tantra is only recommended for someone who has a very developed will power, a terrific sense of humor, and a sense that nothing else matters but God and self-realization. ~ Frederick Lenz

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns. ~ Bernie Sanders

The universe shows us the life of God, or rather it is in itself the life of God. We behold in it his permanent action, the scene upon which his power is exercised, and in which all his attributes are reflected. God is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence, but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire