Power Struggle Quotes

“Think about it this way—if we die together, you won’t have to mourn me.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“The holiday village had sprung up in Bryant Park, and the ice rink and booths were bustling with early Christmas shoppers. It smelled like fried food and scented candles, mixed with the occasional blast of diesel from the traffic inching along 42nd Street. When I think of how New York City smells, this is it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Doubtless Princess Juliana intended for me to overhear her comment on seeing Theodora in wedding regalia. “She’s like wisteria: beautiful in a vulgarly decorative way, cloyingly scented and an unstoppable climber.” Her eyes met mine and she made a motion as if scribbling in the air, daring me to write down her words.”
― Carol Strickland, The Eagle and the Swan

“I believe a family can be like that sports team. A successful family wins as a team. But if its members are intent upon winning their own individual battles with one another, the team loses. A winning solution is to work out the differences and, when it’s over, let it be over. Then they can get back in the game as a team.”
― Steve Goodier

“Being a sensitive empath is a beautiful thing as an artist, and it fosters a deep burning curiosity about why we do the things we do.”
― Alanis Morissette

“Liberation from dictatorships ultimately depends on the people's ability to liberate themselves.”
― Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy

“In England, the struggle between church and kings would take centuries to resolve. Interestingly, in the end, neither institution came out on top. Today, each is as powerless as the other. As people power emerged, we invented politicians. We're not bright.”
― Jodi Taylor, A Symphony of Echoes

“In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it onto motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“In truth, we were similar. Like two sides of a fan, we were at odds with each other, we competed with each other, but our fates similarly rested in the hands of the Emperor--the holder, the commander, the manipulator of our destinies.”
― Weina Dai Randel, The Moon in the Palace

“You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.”
― Scott Lynch, Rogues

“The eternal sea of politics is best left to politicians.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars

“When the sun goes down, the moon becomes the king of the sky.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“Power within
A wiser woman kin
I cannot give her
The proper word
She is worth so much more
She is the one that should be adored”
― Maddy Kobar, The Songs of The Gullible Wiseman: The Early Poems of Maddy Kobar, 2008-2013

“I know how easy it was,' said Lemoine. Mira didn't follow. How easy what was?' All of it,' he said, shrugging. Getting rich. Staying ich. Winning. It was all so easy. I just took what I wanted, and it was mine. I said what I wanted, and people got it for me. I did what I wanted, and nobody stopped me. So simple. And if it was easy for me, then it could be easy for anybody, and that’s a very frightening thought. Apart from anything else, it would be untenable, Everyone can't be on top, or it wouldn't be the top any more, would it? That's just a fact. And I've been in the citadels of power,' he added. I've eaten at the high tables; I've seen behind the doors that never open. Everyone's the same. You reach a certain level and it's all exactly the same: it's all just luck and loopholes and being in the right place at the right time, and compound growth taking care of the rest. That's why we're all building barricades. It's in case the rest of you ever figure out how incredibly easy it was for us to get to where we are. Jesus,' Mira said. "That's fucking dark”
― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

“Privilege is simply the target the progressive left paints on the back of those whose power they want.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“How does one go on after doing such unspeakable things? It's
all rather simple, really," he continued, speaking in someone else's voice. "Say to yourself, 'What things?' And it becomes clear...you are blameless. They brought it on themselves. What have they ever done for you except control your life? They tore you away from your sister; they ripped you from your home. Did you ask to be saved? No! Forget them and start over...with us, your true family, my Corcitura, my own.”
― Melika Dannese Lux, Corcitura

“I'm already in hell; what else you got?”
― Evelyn Smith, The Summer of Secrets

“Je veux être Calife à la place du Calife! (Vizir Iznogoud)”
― Goscinny

“Where Storms Nest by Stewart Stafford

Time's arrow has left its quiver,
And mortal men denied a sliver,
Of sweet-faced solace or settled debt,
Surrendering all to sweeping death.

Beware the vixen with the perished pup,
Of merciless slight and sacrilegious sup,
Of mother's milk and witches' brew,
Curdling infamy and death's-head stew.

The trap is sprung, the rider unseated,
A mourning procession for the defeated,
A great wrong sits on the anointed throne,
She is Queen Bee and you, but a drone.

From a spider's web veil, she does regard,
Hateful glances from black heart's shard,
Envenomed nature of poisonous Man,
The scorpion's strike of a foul plan.

After seeking power and blood and lust,
Remorse a late guest to a dagger's thrust,
The vulture shrieks to the globe's outer rim,
That Man's ambition is a Hell to him.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The biggest egos are the most fragile.”
― Candice Jarrett, Mortal Tether

“He (George Washington) saw those dangers to good government without even exposure to today’s runaway election expenses. For the presidency alone, what is more wasteful than the multimillions of dollars raised and spent for presidential primaries? All evidence is that today, the true best and brightest of our potential national leaders have no appetite for entering into the long, long months of primaries, raising and spending those multimillions, exhausting all that money and themselves, getting their careers dissected and maligned. Then, the “lucky” winner emerging in the fall is usually so smeared by his primary rivals that the other party simply has to raise a few reminders of what a candidate’s own party “friends” had said about him or her. Hell of a system, after more than 230 years of the evolution of our democracy.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results