The Will To Power Quotes

[Anything which] is a living thing and not a dying body ... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power ... 'Exploitation' ... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery(the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed ~ Oswald Spengler

The will to power, the force of desire, appears as an insensitive urge to dominate. But several points in Nietzsche's work speak against such a reading. The "self" includes the desire above all for self-overcoming. It is our own limits we most seek to break. ~ Karmen MacKendrick

All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power. ~ Bell Hooks

The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed. ~ Rajneesh

We have all grown up, one might say, thinking of nature as an
adorable, helpless bunny that some people want to protect and
others, motivated by the will to power that is the unmentionable
force behind so much of contemporary culture, want to stomp into
a bloody pulp just to show that they can. Both sides are mistaken,
for what they have misidentified as a bunny is one paw of a sleep-
ing grizzly bear who, if roused, is quite capable of tearing both sides
limb from limb and feasting on their carcasses. The bear, it must be
remembered, is bigger than we are, and stronger. We forget this at
our desperate peril. ~ John Michael Greer

If a country is governed with tolerance, the people are comfortable and honest. If a country is governed with repression, the people are depressed and crafty. When the will to power is in charge, the higher the ideals, the lower the results. Try to make people happy, and you lay the groundwork for misery. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice. Thus the Master is content to serve as an example and not to impose her will. She is pointed, but doesn't pierce. Straightforward, but supple. Radiant, but easy on the eyes. ~ Laozi

Wherever I found a living creature, there I found the will to power. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Our drives are reducible to the will to power. The will to power is the ultimate fact at which we arrive. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions ... ~ Sherwood Anderson

Life is the will to power; our natural desire to dominate and reshape the world to fit our own preferences and assert our personal strength to the fullest degree. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Great Man ... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone ... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar ... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too? ~ Robertson Davies

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. ~ George W. Bush

Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning. ~ Octavio Paz

The will to power can express itself only against resistances; it seeks that which resists it
this is the native tendency of theamoeba when it extends its pseudopodia and gropes around. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood, Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts, the will to power at the price of the lives of others. ~ Jon Meacham

Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve. ~ Wm. Paul Young

Nothing in life possesses value except the degree of power
assuming that life itself is the will to power. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The darker side of Nietzsche's ideas was incorporated into the Nazi belief system. Part of the link was straightforward: some things Nietzsche said were pure Nazi doctrine. His comments that 'The extinction of many types of people is just as desirable as any form of reproduction' and that 'the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate' could come from any work on racial hygiene.

Nietzsche's central contribution was not these explicitly Social Darwinist views, but his rejection of the Judeo-Christian morality of compassion for the weak. Self-creation required hardness towards oneself: a strong will imposing coherence on conflicting impulses. It also requires hardness on others. Conflicts between the self-creative projects of different people made inevitable the attempt to dominate others. The whole of life was a struggle in which victory went to the brave and to the strong-willed. Noble human qualities, linked with the will to power, were brought out in combat but atrophied in peace. Compassion was weakness, cowardice and self-deception. The Judeo-Christian emphasis on it was poison. In drawing these consequences from his beliefs about the death of God and from Social Darwinism, Nietzsche provided the part of the Nazi belief system which 'justified' the cruel steps they took to implement their other beliefs. ~ Jonathan Glover

The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing
that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism: The weak and the failures shall perish. They ought even to be helped to perish. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

By focusing exclusively on the events of the day, journalism all but severs the connection between time and eternity. It makes the world appear to be nothing but an endless jumble of events through which it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern anything beyond the relatively base motivations of lust, calculated self-interest, and the will to power. In short, journalism is not able to communicate wisdom. ~ Craig M. Gay

I was a Marxist Utopian dreamer for a decade before I learned the vulnerabilities of Marxist theories. As I looked back it was full of deeply flawed arguments, but they were central to my thoughts in the fifties. I let their words saturate my mind before I went to seminary, and they remained in my mind like a ghost well beyond my years at Yale.The ideas I most loved were expressed by three in particular: the will to power (Nietzsche), the desire to understand the sexual roots of all behavior (Freud) and the search for radical social change (Marx). Even today when I speak of modernity, I am pointing especially to those three prototypes of modern consciousness. ~ Thomas C. Oden

The will to power which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life. ~ Rudolf Rocker

To hold typically liberal views, therefore, and to assume that if we liked we could all settle down to love one another and live in perfect amity and harmony together, is possible only to those idealists who are congenitally blind to the true character of all life; whilst as for those numskulls who begin to see and think of the Will to Power only when figures like Napoleon, Stalin or Hitler appear, and who overlook it wholly in themselves, their wives, their children and their cat, they are even more dangerous than the idealists aforesaid ~ Anthony Mario Ludovici

Where I found the living, there I found the will to power; even in the will of servants I found the will to be master. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The will to power is the will to ecstasy is the will to surrender is the will to submit and, in extremis, to die. Or to put it another way, the rage to attain a freedom and happiness one's psyche cannot accept creates enormous anxiety and ends in self-punishing despair. ~ Ellen Willis

After this examination there are still gaps of doubt and apparent contradiction. And it is natural that it be so, because the Eternal Return is an experience. There lies its importance: in the fact of being.

The Eternal Return is not the reincarnation as it has been spread in our days. Original Buddhism, on the other hand, could be pointing to something similar. Buddha was a shastriya, that is, a prince of the warrior caste, not a brahman, or priest, and his Doctrine was also for heroes and warriors. Then, it has been transformed by the monks. Buddha, like Nietzsche, talks about a reincarnation without mentioning the soul. What is it that reincarnates, then? As in Nietzsche it could be that 'atom-seed', or 'all those conditions that determine its existence and that they come back to give themselves', in the turn of the Energy, or of the Light that finds the old image. The Buddhist would want to be liberated, to leave the Circle; that's why it kills desire, that makes return.

The Will to Power, as we have seen, returns to its 'archive', wishes to possess again its 'non-existence'. The difference: Nietzsche wants to return eternally, incorporates the Will and considers Nirvana a dream of decadents, of warriors who have become priests, monks. However, we do not know what Buddha really thought, because he did not talk about these things, nor did he explain Nirvana. Maybe, he just wanted to get out of this Circle to enter to fight in another wider Circle, tha ~ Miguel Serrano

Creation has been taken down a very different path than We [God] desired. In your world the value of the individual is constantly weighed against the survival of the system - whether political, economical, social, or religious - any system, actually. First one person, and then a few and finally even many are easily sacrificed for the good and ongoing existence of that system. In one form or another this lies behind every struggle for power every prejudice, every war, and every abuse of relationship. The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal. ~ Wm. Paul Young

There's another thing you've got to remember. You talk about these highbrows having a higher art and a more philosophical drama. But remember what a lot of the philosophy is! Remember what sort of conduct those highbrows often present to the highest! All about the Will to Power and the Right to Live and the Right to Experience - damned nonsense and more than damned nonsense - nonsense that can damn." Father ~ G.K. Chesterton

For that matter, men are perhaps indifferent to power ... What fascinates them in this idea, you see, is not real power, it's the illusion of being able to do exactly as they please. The king's power is the power to govern, isn't it? But man has no urge to govern
he has an urge to compel, as you said. To be more than a man, in a world of men. To escape man's fate, I was saying. Not powerful
all-powerful. The visionary disease, of which the will to power is only the intellectual justification, is the will to god-head
every man dreams of being god. ~ Andre Malraux

Though strength be wanting, the will to action
Merits praise. ~ Ovid

He writes that synergism gives the "fallen creature . . . ability to control God's free and sovereign work of salvation." Then he audaciously associates all Christians who are not Calvinists with belief in this doctrine. White believes that the act of receiving (as in receiving God's grace) is a type of "work" that takes away from the sovereignty of God. He therefore concludes that a man's free will to receive the gospel somehow "controls God's work of salvation. ~ Micah Coate

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. ~ John Howard Griffin

Your music, your lyrics, the leaden prose of your life that proves that everything you are and are not, the structures you build to make futility seem like meaning, the dead and living – who will soon be dead, who will soon be gone, who will soon be smoke – rising in columns and forming clouds in the night sky. For now and ever, by the will of dead and dying gods. ~ Joseph Fink

But doctor, even you, a Hittite, saw what our Mycenaean shields were like! Oh, don't smile, I may be an old woman, but I known what I am talking about, and if you will be patient, you will understand, too… You do not see the wholeness of things, the Virtue, the arête. You observe one fact, the single symptom, like the Hittite doctor you are, but your eyes are blind to the Ananke, the whole Order of things which even the gods cannot infringe. The shield is formed on a frame, and that frame is the will of man. But after the sun and rain have been on it a week, its shape has changed beyond man's guiding; and that is Ananke… though I began upon a firm frame, the hide of my experience has tautened and twisted until now I am as Ananke will me to be. I am not what I wished, or others wished for me: I am what it was ordained for me to become ever the seed passed from my father to my mother. I am the cow's hide, tormented to the only shape it can be. Now do you see? Do you see that there may be no anger, no regret, no remorse? ~ Henry Treece

The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease. ~ Oliver Sacks

if we suppose that God, being supremely powerful, supremely wise, and supremely loving, can achieve, and will settle for nothing less than, perfect justice, then we must also suppose that he will settle for nothing less than a full atonement for sin - something that will actually make up for, or cancel out, sin; and as we have seen, punishment (in and of itself) has no power to do that. ~ Thomas Talbott

Power is, and will forever be, tethered to its own weakness. ~ Alex London

I am defined by my will to survive, not by intelligence or cunning or money or good looks. The Creator didn't see her way clear to give me those things, instead she gave me a strong will. ~ Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

We're going after the possibilities of tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud. We're going to look at this stuff very closely. We have the jurisdiction, we have the resources, and we have the will. ~ Eric Schneiderman

Choice. - The question is, What influences, directs, or determines the mind or Will to come to such a conclusion or choice as it does? ~ Jonathan Edwards

Clearly, what God wants above all is our will which we received as a free gift from God in creation and possess as though our own. When a man trains himself to acts of virtue, it is with the help of grace from God from whom all good things come that he does this. The will is what man has as his unique possession ~ Saint Joseph

And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. ~ Thomas Merton

The greatest discovery is to find a hero within oneself that will choose life over death; and fight for hope through despair to possess the will to live. ~ Ellen J. Barrier

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. ~ Dale Carnegie

There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. ~ David Hume

The awakening passed from simple recognition of my need for God at the center of my life, to a depth where the will is stirred And that is a deeper place by far. That is the place of response, of unifying one's heart, mind, soul and feet around a decision. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The call to "take the land" ... is not a call to a new political, cultural or geographical dominance. It is Kingdom of God territory. It is the will of the Eternal God being done on earth, as it is in heaven. ~ Ken Baker

Sir 19:25 And if he be hindered from sinning for want of power, if he shall find opportunity to do evil, he will do it. ~ Various

Whenever your heart calls you, and tells you to go against your leader's will, you must follow your heart. It does not matter what your leader tells you, main is what your heart, mind and soul tell you, because these three companions of yours give you the will of the gods. The gods are always right. Leaders can sometimes be ruthless and give you wrong commands, but your heart – it will always stay pure. Listen to your inner world, Aetius, and you will always find the right path to follow. ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

And too soon marr'd are those so early made.
The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,
She is the hopeful lady of my earth:
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
My will to her consent is but a part;
An she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
This night I hold an old accustom'd feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,
And like her most whose merit most shall be:
Which on more view, of many mine being one
May stand in number, though in reckoning none,
Come, go with me. ~ William Shakespeare

Strength isn't a feeling. It's the will to forget ahead regardless of the circumstances. ~ Jaime Jo Wright

A true university can never rest upon the will of one man. A true university always rests upon the wills of many divergent-minded old men, who refuse to be disturbed, but who growl in their kennels. ~ John Jay Chapman

Alain will do everything in his power to win, he doesn't like getting beaten by anyone and least of all me. ~ Nigel Mansell

Beyond imagination and insight, the most important component of talent is perseverance - the will to write and rewrite in pursuit of perfection. Therefore, when inspiration sparks the desire to write, the artist immediately asks: Is this idea so fascinating, so rich in possibility, that I want to spend months, perhaps years, of my life in pursuit of its fulfillment? Is this concept so exciting that I will get up each morning with the hunger to write? Will this inspiration compel me to sacrifice all of life's other pleasures in my quest to perfect its telling? If the answer is no, find another idea. Talent and time are a writer's only assets. Why give your life to an idea that's not worth your life? ~ Robert McKee

God delights to hear the prayers of His people when they individually ask, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" The Christian pursues God, looking for His marching orders, seeking to know what course of action
is pleasing to Him. This search for the will of God is a holy quest-a pursuit that is to be undertaken with vigor by the godly person. ~ R.C. Sproul

He who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I have learned that in all negotiations nothing matters except the will to reach agreement. ~ Harold Macmillan

I don't want anything to happen to you. You being hurt ... that thought fills me with dread. I can't promise not to interfere, not if I think you'll come to harm." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "I love you, Anastasia. I will do everything in my power to protect you. I cann't imagine my life without you. ~ E.L. James

Love is the commitment of my will to your needs and best interests, regardless of the cost. ~ Tim Kimmel

Brokenness is the shattering of my self-will - the absolute surrender of my will to the will of God. It is saying "Yes, Lord!" - no resistance, no chafing, no stubbornness - simply submitting myself to His direction and will in my life. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

The four basic ingredients for success are: you must have the will to want something; you must have the right kind of attitude; you must have perseverance, and then you must have wisdom. Then you combine these four and then you get to where you want to get to. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Success lies in the desire to excel and the will to make it happen ~ Jit Puru

Concentration can be cultivated. One can learn to exercise will power, discipline one's body and train one's mind. ~ Anil Ambani

Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing ... ~ Ian Anderson

Although people call love a capricious and unaccountable emotion that arises like an illness, nonetheless it has its own laws and reasons, like everything else. If these laws have been little studied so far, that is because a person struck down by love is in no condition to observe with a scholar's eye as the impression steals into his soul and shackles his emotions like a dream, as first his eyes go blind, at which moment his pulse and then his heart begin beating harder, all of a sudden there arises as of yesterday an undying devotion, the desire to sacrifice oneself; one's I gradually vanishes and crosses over into him or her; the mind becomes wither unusually dull or unusually sharp; the will surrenders to the will of another; and the head bows, the knees shake and the tears and fever come. ~ Ivan Goncharov

Even in concept, angels are unsettling. They're like drones, totally mindlessly following the will of God. The only difference between the Heavenly angels and demons is that the demons opted to follow after a different queen bee. So, you have these eyeball speckled, part animal monsters who exist only to worship and obey God. They don't have a moral compass, they just act. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. - Dreamtigers ~ Jorge Luis Borges