Abuse Of Power Quotes

“Power is neither good nor evil. It just is. It's what people do with power that matters.”
― C.J. Redwine, The Traitor Prince

“When the President does it , that means that it is not illegal.”
― Richard M. Nixon

“Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.”
― Maureen Brady, Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse

“For scapegoating to occur, a community must agree on a target who can be blamed for anything that goes wrong. Sometimes a community just needs someone to BE wrong all the time, so they can know they are right. It really doesn’t matter if the person is actually guilty or wrong, as long as everyone agrees on it. That agreement allows the community to act against the scapegoat and feel justified. They can hate, abuse, ridicule, neglect, expel, wound or kill the scapegoat and actually experience feelings of joy and well-being afterward.”
― Raven Foundation

“It was a beautiful lie that they had all been telling themselves—that you could have magic without monsters.”
― Anne Ursu, The Real Boy

“When you fear nothing, you have nothing to fear”
― S.F. Chandler, We the Great Are Misthought

“The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.”
― David Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress

“If we make a union in these fields, is there anything we can do to ensure it doesn't become corrupt? Or that later it doesn't only look after the people who work here, we just look after our own, and everyone else can fend for themselves? We need to fight for ourselves, here and now, but we also need changes so large and impossible they encompass the entire world.”
― Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor

“I was hoping you could tell me, Father. Dr. Rothenberg tells me that whoever it is told you to retain him to counsel the boys.”
Now he understood. Rothenberg told Jenny about the Voice and the Coalition, but why? What happened to cause him to cross the Voice? This was a dangerous move—there might be consequences.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“When the locus of evaluation is seen as residing in the expert, it would appear that the long-range social implications are in the direction of the social control of the many by the few.”
― Carl R. Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory

“It was white. White and gold. It was livery.
I told myself it meant nothing. It was just a color.
But I was wrong. That color meant everything.
It was a command to the Queen’s ladies that they shouldn’t greet me or acknowledge that I’d entered a room.
It was an indelible line drawn between me and the other Grisha.
It was a signal to the King that he could follow me into my chambers and press me up against the wall, that I was available for his use.
That there was no point to crying out.”
― Leigh Bardugo, The Tailor

“Abuse is the weakest expression of strength. It is weakness to destroy what you ought to protect, build and make better.”
― Kingsley Opuwari Manuel

“Power's not a chalice. It's a hammer. And it only does one thing. Power smashes. The subtext of all power is extortion. It's always the threat of force, of imprisonment, the threat of death. Always.”
― Adam Skelter, Prophet Margin: The Benefit of the Doubt

“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped by influence, by power, by us.”
― Wendell Berry

“If I could I would!" is the maxim of tyrants.”
― Lamine Pearlheart, The Sunrise Scrolls: To Life from the Shadows II

“We live in an age where corporations are people and employees are not.”
― Clifford Cohen

“I blamed myself for being vulnerable. Vulnerability felt like a banner that announced, 'Come and get me!' But when I think of it the other way, I don’t pounce on other people just because I can. I don’t go around looking for people smaller or weaker than me so I can attack them. When I find someone’s vulnerability, my impulse is to protect and cover them, not to use it against them.”
― Christina Enevoldsen

“We’ve all acted like sheep, blindly following the herd and leaning on our Powers in lieu of knowledge. But knowledge is what could save us.”
― Starr Z. Davies, Unique

“This monster needs to be locked up. Where did this predator come from? Has he done this before? How many young boys has he traumatized? How could the church expose unsuspecting children to such a man?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“Over-the-counter ‪‎drug‬ ‪‎abuse‬ or addiction was a problem that I observed at Mauna Kea”
― Steven Magee

“In the 1960's, Labour had gained some power, or at least respectability. Spokesmen for the working class - but of course not necessarily coming from that class or belonging there except through ideology - were upset by the exposed inequalities and abuses disguised as treatment. It did not exactly strengthen the credibility of these measures that most receivers of this type of treatment for crime turned out to belong to just those classes supposed to be in political power.”
― Nils Christie, Limits to Pain: The Role of Punishment in Penal Policy

“Post-script: When my tutor got a famous scholarship and went to Oxford, he broke my heart, of course. I sobbed in cafés and hotel bars, bored my friends half to death, and thought myself tragically bereft. I cannot in all honesty claim to have been liberated from anything in particular by my relationship with this man. I hated his subject and was bad at it, failed it twice and did not care. He made me laugh, that's the main thing I remember. I often felt he was privately laughing at me, from the eminence of his twenty-four years. This made me watchful and defensive....it had never occurred to me to call what happened between me and my tutor 'sexual harassment' or 'abuse of power'.”
― Helen Garner, The First Stone

“The moral and rational perceptions of the slave-holder are still more perverted than those of the slave; oppression is more debasing and injurious to the intellect of the oppressor than to that of the oppressed. The gains of unrighteousness have rendered the slave-holder more obstinately, more incurably blind, and inaccesssible to reason, than the slave.”
― Heyrick Elizabeth Coltman, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition: Or an Inquiry Into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means

“... Why come kick the table over? Couldn't he have just pulled up a chair with the rest of us?"
"Some men just need to own everything." The voice was so quiet that it took Bobby a moment to realize that Clarissa had spoken. She was still making Ketchup art with her french fries and not looking at any of them.
"What's that Peaches?" Amos said.
...
"This sounds like personal experience." Bobby said cutting him off. "What are you thinking, Clare?"

"...By owning and controlling a share in [ the rice growers' companies] my father was in a position to dictate policy to the Ganymede Agricultural Union. It meant, in terms Ganymede food production, he couldn't be ignored by the local government."
"What did he use that for?" Bobby asjed.
"Nothing," Clarissa responded with a delicate wave of one hand, " but he had it. He owned an important piece of Ganymede. A thing he hadn't conjtrioled before. And some men just need to own everything, everything that they lay their eyes that they don't posses, it's like a sliver in their finger."
Clarissa pushed her soggy fries away and smiled at them all. "my father could be the kindest, most genrous, and loving man, right up until he wanted something and you wouldn't give it to him. I don't know why I think this, but Duarte feels the same. These are men that will mercilessly punish anyone who won't comply , but with tears in their eyes and begging them to tell you why you made them do it.”
― James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising

“She adjusted her rearview mirror to look at her two silent sons. Kenny was glaring at Jake fiercely with one finger to his lips, silently ordering him quiet. A single tear ran down Kenny's cheek. The family drove home in silence. Something was terribly wrong.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“Outside the door, Jennifer listened in horror. What was it? Someone hurt them. Who? Her thoughts were gathering, inching toward a conclusion, but she resisted. Did something happen at school? Was someone being bullied? The camping trip was fun, wasn't it? She decided that the boys needed professional help but not that night. That night, she would hug them, kiss them, and put them to bed. That night, she would simply love them with all her heart.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“Well . . . Gerry visited the family last night. He convinced Jennifer to let him up to the boys’ room to talk to them in private. Little did Jennifer suspect that the problem is the priest.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“Who are you people? Who cares about arousing suspicion? I care about safety and welfare, especially of the children. Who is concerned for their well-being?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“Somehow, he makes 'understood' sound like 'fuck you.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“There are no perfect adults. We sin constantly and then forgive each other for our sins. There are no perfect fathers, no perfect mothers, no perfect priests.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith