Quotes about Power

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept, for as a Christian I believe that there is a creative personal power in this universe who is the ground and essence of all reality—a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter.

We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world....Love is the only way.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

the same disposition that impelled the Greeks and Romans to embellish their precious sarcophagi precisely as we still see them, with festivals, dancing, weddings,4 hunts, animal combat, bacchanals, thus with depictions of the most powerful press of life,i which they bring before us not only in such entertainments, but in group debauchery extending even to the point of copulation between satyrs and goats.

A man strives to get direct mastery over things either by understanding them or by compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to indirect mastery, namely through a man; all her direct mastery being limited to him alone.

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.

For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From Poetry is Not a Luxury)

Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.