Quotes about Power

Shorty felt about the war the same way I and most ghetto Negroes did: Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.

We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!

It is the merit of European political scientists and sociologists to give a high priority to the power of ideas in a social struggle. In the United States, it is our weakness to confuse the numerical strength of an organization and the publicity attached to leaders with the germinating forces that sow the seeds of social upheaval in our community.

She threatened a Negro man who worked for her father that if he didn't take (have sex with) her she would swear he tried rape. He had no choice, except that he quit working for them. And from then until she finished high school, she managed it several times with other Negroes

As testimony to the power of redemption and the force of human personality, the autobiography of Malcolm X is a revelation.

the collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world's non-white man.

You have the power within you to endure anything, for your mere opinion can render it tolerable, perhaps even acceptable, by regarding it as an opportunity for enlightenment or a matter of duty.

In the life of man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land;and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: the love of knowledge.

Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use you suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the pwoer that rules it (to which your art owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. (II.4)

To change your experience, change your opinion. If you're upset by something outside you, it's not the thing itself that upsets you, but your opinion of it. And it's in your power to wipe away that opinion immediately.

If you suffer distress because of some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you but your judgement about it, and it is within your power to cancel that judgement at any moment.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can't hold out against that . . . well, then, heap shame upon it.