Best 84 Quotes About Power When You Need Strength
Throughout human history, power has been highly coveted and respected in every society. But why do people crave power? Simply, because it is a catalyst for enacting changes and fleshing out ideas and visions in every area of life: personal, professional and civic. With power comes respect and influence that make things easier, by reducing the effort and the struggle involved in accomplishing them. Here we have collected for you the most inspirational quotes about power.
Power can be acquired through knowledge and expertise, hard work, or due to a lucky break, but may also be granted to you as a member of society, as in the example of your right to vote. Having power means you can realize your dreams, but also the dreams of others and, in essence, you can carry out your will despite resistance from others.
Although power per se is not inherently good or evil, it has acquired a negative connotation in recent years, often used in conjunction with corruption and unethical practices. In real life, power is sought as a destination for reasons of prestige, status or fame, often abused by egocentric individuals or Machiavellian minded groups for purposes of personal gain or to dominate upon others.
On the other hand, when wielded ethically and responsibly, power can make great things happen. Power does not stem from titles or external sources but from within. It is a state of mind and we all have the power to make a difference. So, use your power to bring positive and meaningful changes in your life, but also benefit others by inspiring and helping them evolve. The power to change the future is in your hands!
Share these quotes with friends and loved ones to encourage them! Muse upon them and let them reconnect you to your power!
Table of Contents
- Important Quotes To Help You Find Your Power
- Inspirational Quotes About Power
- Quotes About Misuse of Power and Corruption
- Quotes About Power by Powerful People
- Quotes About Control And Power
Important Quotes To Help You Find Your Power
Most people suffer from a lack of belief in their own power. But the truth is that you are more powerful than you think. The following quotes will help you replace all the negative talk with yourself with positive affirmations.
- You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Marcus Aurelius
- Find people who share your values, and you’ll conquer the world together. John Ratzenberger
- With great power there must also come great responsibility! Stan Lee
- The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. Alice Walker
- Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. Leonardo da Vinci
- If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought. Peace Pilgrim
- As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. Toni Morrison
- Our power is in our ability to decide. Buckminster Fuller
- Knowledge is power. Francis Bacon
- A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Henry Miller
- One of the things about powerful people is they have the ability to make it look easy. Ice-T
- The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. Roseanne Barr
- There is a source of power in each of us that we don’t realize until we take responsibility. Diane Nash
- Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. Eckhart Tolle
- When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do. RuPaul
- The victim mindset dilutes the human potential. By not accepting personal responsibility for our circumstances, we greatly reduce our power to change them. Steve Maraboli
- Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night. Marian Wright Edelman
- All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
- The measure of a man is what he does with power. Plato
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Robert A. Heinlein
- Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power. William Gaddis
- Power is not sufficient evidence of truth. Samuel Johnson
- Where there is power, there is resistance. Michel Foucault
- The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while. Albert Einstein
- Power … is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end. Jeane Kirkpatrick
- Do the thing and you will have the power. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Eric Hoffer
- Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be. Alice Walker
- A fool is very dangerous when in power. Denis Fonvizin
- In the main it will be found that a power over a man’s support [salary] is a power over his will. Alexander Hamilton
- Our power comes not from suppressing others but from uplifting them. Sakyong Mipham
- What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do. Aristotle
- Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. Lao Tzu
- If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius
- I believe in the immeasurable power of love; that true love can endure any circumstance and reach across any distance. Steve Maraboli
- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. W. H. Murray
Inspirational Quotes About Power
True power is moral, just and is about freedom and empowering others realize their dreams. It is about creating positive outcomes, inspiring meaning and purpose in life.
- We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. Margaret Atwood
- The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. Mahatma Gandhi
- Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. Oscar Wilde
- Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. Paulo Freire
- Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed. Mwai Kibaki
- Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. Blaise Pascal
- Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. Beth Revis
- I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine. Emily Dickinson
- Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. Elie Weisel
- Character is power. Booker T. Washington
- The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. William Hazlitt
- I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Leo F. Buscaglia
- Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
- Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force. Mary McLeod Bethune
- We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. Ursula K. Le Guin
- Power is the most persuasive rhetoric. Friedrich von Schiller
- It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. Sigmund Freud
- You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
- The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good. Baltasar Gracian
- The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions. Paulo Coelho
- Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. Honoré de Balzac
- Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
Quotes About Misuse of Power and Corruption
Those intoxicated with power have a reduced capacity to take into account the perspective of others. Mind altered and fueled by their own egocentric interests and insatiable desires, they abuse power, acting in a sadistic and spiteful manner.
- For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit. Noam Chomsky
- Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak. John Adams
- Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton
- Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous. William Proxmire
- Power is dangerous. It corrupts the best and attracts the worst. Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up. Ragnar Lothbrok
- Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts. Perhaps the fear of a loss of power. John Steinbeck
- It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. David Brin
- Authority, power, and wealth do not change a man; they only reveal him. Ali ibn Abi Talib
- Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. James Madison
- To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals. Mark Twain
- Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers. James F. Byrnes
- Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. Charles Caleb Colton
- The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use; of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public. John F. Kennedy
- Power lacks moral or principles. It only has interests. Horacio Castellanos Moya
Quotes About Power by Powerful People
A collection of thought provoking quotes, by some of the world’s most prominent leaders and thinkers that provide valuable insight into the concept of power and its use in effecting changes.
- Silence is the ultimate weapon of power. Charles de Gaulle
- Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it. George Washington
- Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
- Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. Napoleon Bonaparte
- Power is not alluring to pure minds. Thomas Jefferson
- Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln
- Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. Margaret Thatcher
- Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Henry Kissinger
- My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Quotes About Control And Power
Power has been often used as a means for controlling people. The malicious and vindictive use of power destroys peoples’ lives and can lead to tragedies and despicable crimes. Power without accountability and authority without wisdom can only lead to a dystopia.
- We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. George Orwell
- Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment. Mahatma Gandhi
- You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
- Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers … and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever. Toni Morrison
- When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. Euripides, Orestes
The idea of power is a matter of perspective. Power as such does not carry any moral value, it is simply the means for changing the course of events. In the right hands it can manifest miracles, but when exercised with vile intentions it can become oppressive and a threat. Keep an open mind and advocate for yourself and others. Use your power and become the change you want to see in this world!
If you like it, pin it!
You may also like:
71 Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes on the Decision of Doing Good
Best 92 Quotes About Justice (That Will Make You Question What Is Fair)
101 Leadership Quotes | A Study on Obstacles and How to Overcome Them