Some people are foolish enough to imagine that wealth and power and fame satisfy our hearts: but they never do, unless they are used to create and distribute happiness in the world.
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, these three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.[Macht bedeutet jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen Widerstreben durchzusetzen, gleichviel worauf diese Chance beruht.]
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience—but when one unmistakably isn’t such an artist, there’s no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.
Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea; they become powerless when they oppose it.
In the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.
In life and in painting too, I can easily do without the dear Lord, but I can’t, suffering as I do, do without something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.
