This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.
I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.
Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.
Value your parabatai," he said. "For it is a precious bond. All love is precious. It is why we do what we do. Why do we fight demons? Why are they not fit custodians of this world? What makes us better? It is because they do not build, but destroy. They do not love, but hate only. We are human and fallible, we Shadowhunters. But if we did not have the capability to love, we could not guard humans; we must love to guard them. My parabatai, he loved like few ever could love, with all and everything. I see you are like that too; it burns more brightly in you than the fire of Heaven
Today is a new day. Don't let your history interfere with your destiny! Let today be the day you stop being a victim of your circumstances and start taking action towards the life you want. You have the power and the time to shape your life. Break free from the poisonous victim mentality and embrace the truth of your greatness. You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life!
Love springs from the inside. It is the immortal surge of passion, excitement, energy, power, strength, prosperity, recognition, respect, desire, determination, enthusiasm, confidence, courage, and vitality, that nourishes, extends and protects. It possesses an external objective - life.
Seven years, Dawn. Working with the Slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful... a witch. A demon. Hell, I could fit Oz in my shaving kit, but come a full moon, he had a wolfy mojo not to be messed with. Powerful, all of them. And I'm the guy who fixes the windows. They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't Chosen, to live so near the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night, and I see you working here today. You're not special; you're extraordinary.
Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves. ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent.
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.
We awaken by asking the right questions. We awaken when we see knowledge being spread that goes against our own personal experiences. We awaken when we see popular opinion being wrong but accepted as being right, and what is right being pushed as being wrong. We awaken by seeking answers in corners that are not popular. And we awaken by turning on the light inside when everything outside feels dark.
Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.
YOU ARE JUSTYou are not just for the right or left,but for what is right over the wrong.You are not just rich or poor,but always wealthy in the mind and heart.You are not perfect, but flawed.You are flawed, but you are just.You may just be conscious human,but you are also a magnificentreflection of God.
Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.
Do not dilute the truth of your potential. We often convince ourselves that we cannot change, that we cannot overcome the circumstances of our lives. That is simply not true. You have been blessed with immeasurable power to make positive changes in your life. But you can't just wish it, you can't just hope it, you can't just want it... you have to LIVE it, BE it, DO it.
Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.
What is this power of words? In our everyday routine, we use words to carry out all our transactions. If someone praises us then we get happy and if someone criticizes us then we get annoyed. If we take a closer look at this phenomenon then we will easily understand that when somebody is praising us or calling us names, that time no material comes and hits us. All that happens is, we just get to hear the sound of the words uttered by the other person. When that sound reaches our ears, our mind starts analyzing and interpreting that sound. If the interpretation given by the mind is positive then we get happy. If the interpretation given by the mind is negative then we get annoyed. It is true that the meaning of those words is already present in our mind. Words only invoke the meaning already present in our mind. This relationship between words and their meanings is known as ‘Shakti’ (power) in philosophy.
Never justify someones wrong action, without them apologizing first & admitting their wrongs. If you do. You are not making them better, but you are making them worse on the bad things they do.
If you have influence on other people. Dont be influenced by their hate, money, jealousy, anger and popularity .
I dont celebrate any friendship that was build on hate, because we share the common enemy.
Children are no longer being parented, but are raised. Thats why they don't have morals, ethics,humanity and manners, because their parents neglected them. We now live in a society that doesnt care about right or wrong.
When people support you when you have done something wrong. It doesnt mean you are right, but it means those people are promoting their hate , bad behavior or living their bad lives through you.
The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .
After that day, I discovered one indelible truth. I discovered that love wasn’t everything that mattered in life. It was an emotion that not many had the luxury of feeling without any pain attached to it. Many say that love will set you free, but I disagree. Love is a cage, a very painful one; its gilded bars made with yearning, heartache, and unfulfilled dreams. And the moment I realized that love wasn’t necessary to one’s survival I became free. No one would have the power to hurt me again.
The great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought?The answer is very simple: God.... He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope and love. It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little. Yes indeed, God's power works quietly in this world, but it is the true and the lasting power. Again and again, God's cause seems to be in its death throes. Yet over and over again it proves to be the thing that truly endures and saves.
Your faith is your conscience, and your conscience is your faith. You cannot have faith without a conscience, but you can have a conscience without faith. Man was designed to be good with or without religion, yet the challenge for many is staying good. Some people claim to be religious but have no conscience, while some people without religion are very much aware of their conscience. Therefore, a religious label does not define your character or validate your worth. In the end, all men will be judged by the amount of truth in them and the weight of their hearts. The heavier the conscience, the heavier the truth. The lighter the heart, the higher it goes. The only spiritual currency one has in the afterlife is amassed in the form of light, in that, the amount you have depends on the weight of your words and deeds in the living. Conscience is everything. Conscience is what connects us to the truth and light of the highest power source of all. God. The cosmic heart of the universe.
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.
Men will allow God to be everywhere but on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow his bounties. they will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends Hes throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth. And we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust.
Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.
All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.
Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone.
I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.
A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.
We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.
It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.
Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful andpowerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is therevelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole wayof seeing the world is turned upside down… all values are transformed… Godrefuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms.
Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her.
But then again, that's what the Book of Job was about to her, a cautionary tale about wanting there to be a God, wanting there to be someone who could enact what a God could enact, or who could sanction what the Devil would do. You want this, people? You want these kinds of powers? No, you don't, and here's why, and here's why it's sheer vanity to want them in any other entity. Look what sort of violence would rain down. Poor Job, sure, poor Job with his hives and his financial losses — though who needs three thousand camels? — and too bad about the kids, forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold, sure, too bad, but it's God who's the miserable bastard here. Look what he got himself up to! No good could come of that type of power; that's what the writer of the Book of Job was saying, and she knew the writer was right.
No matter how tiny you look, you can lead huge men if you have what the huge men don't have.
Never marry when under the guise you need to 'see if it'll work', but rather marry because in your mind you want to make it work.
Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants.
What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time.Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse.This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again.
Your realm is an insane place. In Volaria, no-one goes hungry, slaves are no use when they starve. Those freeborn too lazy or lacking in intelligence to turn sufficient profit to feed themselves are made slaves so they can generate wealth for those deserving of freedom, and be fed in return. Here, your people are chained by their freedom, free to starve and beg from the rich. It's disgusting.
Happiness is not a choice, or we’d all be happy. Let’s stop putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time, and to pretend we can choose to be happy whenever we want. That’s not how life works. Sure, we can make choices that reflect a commitment to our well-being, and the more of these choices we make, the more likely we are to find ourselves feeling good more often. Healthy choices are within our power, and are important. But we can’t choose happiness, and we just set ourselves up for failure by believing we can. Life is more than happiness, anyway. It’s okay to feel all the things we feel. It’s human. There’s no shame in wanting to be happy, of course. We all want to be happy. But rather than try to choose happiness, maybe we can choose to being kinder and more loving. That we can do. We can work hard to take better care of ourselves, and better care of each other. If we do these things, and we remember that we are all connected, all brothers and sisters, all worthy of love, maybe then happiness will choose us a little more often.
You can capture this body of mine, take away my freedom and enslave me. You may even have the power to capture my soul and sentence me to the realm of eternal darkness. But my dreams you cannot touch. They are my will―the very essence of who I am. In them I laugh. In them I cry. In them I love. And in them.....I live.My dreams are untouchable and unceasing.
The Universe delivers to you the vibrational essence of your desire. So be sure you are leaning into that which you desire and not hyperfocusing -- i.e. vibrating/attracting -- on that which you do not desire.
Don't pay attention to people Who tell you can't do it at lenght. Trusting your own instincts Can lead to what's quintessential. Make their limitation be your strenght. You might as well contradict them And then reach your full potential.
Positive thinking is powerful thinking. If you want happiness, fulfillment, success and inner peace, start thinking you have the power to achieve those things. Focus on the bright side of life and expect positive results.
When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.
Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
Why do you feel so powerless? Go spend an hour with ants. Each of those black specks you see is a life. One whole life that you can save, take, or affect in some way. You have the power to make so many lives better. It is within you. Don’t lose sight of that.
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.”~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.”~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
True friends don't come with conditions.
The high road of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
Be a team player, not a bandwagon jumper.
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.
At some point, you just gotta forgive the past, your happiness hinges on it.
We love our partners for who they are, not for who they are not.
Explore, Experience, Then Push Beyond.
Travel is costly yes, but it pays dividends too.
If you didn't earn something, it's not worth flaunting.
Without struggle, success has no value.
There is no such thing as loving a child too much.
It’s the ‘everyday’ experiences we encounter along the journey to who we wanna be that will define who we are when we get there.
Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way
There's more to a person than flesh. Judge others by the sum of their soul and you'll see that beauty is a force of light that radiates from the inside out.
Building bridges is the best defence against ignorance.
Let it shine, the light in you. Oh, and that's delighting me! Various colors shining through. Elated, it fills my soul with ecstasy.
I continuously see myself on an airplane that has unlimited fuel. I go here and there but can't stop. Always flying over my destination. I've come to realize I must jump off with my parachute on of course. That is how I'm viewing my life right now.Once I find that loophole than I've reached my destination to success.
And when hope returns to us, it will be with a passion and power to match every ounce of this crushing despair and pain, every fiery shred of determination that carried us when hope failed. It will claim us with a courage that will make the goddess herself quake and doubt herself.
I Am ! Two powerful words.... You must confess... I Am who God called me to be. I Am a Success. I Am not what you think of me. I Am more than a conqueror. I Am walking by Faith. I Am a Gift.
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.
Take me as godfather." The man asked, "Who art thou?" "I am Death, and I make all equal." Then said the man, "Thou art the right one, thou takest the rich as well as the poor, without distinction; thou shalt be godfather." Death answered, "I will make thy child rich and famous, for he who has me for a friend can lack nothing.
Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.
Some women think being arrogant, selfish, bitter and looking down on others are qualities of being an Independent, strong, powerful and successful business women. No matter how high you are in life. Never look down on others and never forget humanity.
Our government says people must not take law in their own hands, But has given the law in the hands of people who in power. That is why people who are in power are always corrupt, arrogant, violent, Aggressive, selfish, and don't care about anyone. They get away with all the bad things they do that Is criminating unlawful and injustice
Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.
No tricks, no tools, but talent makes a task truly top class.
In a democracy government is the God.
Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.
Let someone else be the most powerful country, make ours the most peaceful country.
Power does not pardon, power punishes.
A poor, who hates power, once become powerful, hates poor.
Before we complicated life with money, machines and missiles we did well with morals, manpower and meetings.
Invariably, knowledge dictates life, liberty, and death, but those who have historically occupied the seats of power not only dictate what is defined as knowledge but also dictate what’s included, what’s excluded, and how it is filtered to society vis-à-vis America’s major institutions . . . particularly the educational system; ultimately, shaping the very essence of life.
War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.
My spouse is my shield, my spouse is my strength.
To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes, To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world; To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter But of that invisible soul pervading reality. To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day; To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory As a moment saved without planning.
Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith....Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.
Words are power. The more words you know and can recognize, use, define, understand, the more power you will have as a human being... The more language you know, the more likely it is that no one can get over on you."selection from book: Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community
Faith in God will elevate you to next level blessings.
Kumwamini Mwenyezi Mungu wakati wa raha ni rahisi kuliko kumwamini Mwenyezi Mungu wakati wa shida, na utahitaji imani kuendelea kumwamini wakati wa dhiki. Vipindi vigumu katika maisha yetu hutokea kwa kila mmoja wetu. Kuamini ya kwamba Mungu ana makusudi ya lazima kukuondolea vikwazo katika maisha yako ni vigumu sana wakati mwingine, lakini imani ndicho kitu cha muhimu zaidi unachotakiwa kuwa nacho katika kipindi hiki ambacho dunia imekata tamaa. Amani ya Mungu, ambayo huzidi hekima na maarifa yote ya kibinadamu, ni kuliamini neno la Mungu kwamba ni la kweli. Bila imani hutaweza kumfurahisha Mungu. Imani ni ufunguo wa nguvu, uwezo na neema ambavyo Mungu ametupangia. Kwa ufupi, Mungu ni mkubwa kuliko wewe na matatizo yako.
I need not adapt in certain ways. I am in fact but a visitor to this world, an ephemeral gasp within its long, tired history, and, before anything else, a follower of Christ. By this alone I have the power not to shuffle away from the Faith, the power to break loose from these marching-shackles of ongoing cultural and political pretense.
Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]
We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.
Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, but also as components that can change... Now, though, we live in a world where text is fluid, where is responds to our instructions. Writing something down records it, but does not make it true or permanent. So why should we put up with a system we don't like simply because it's been written somewhere?
Devereaux is going with our pitch.”“Hey, that’s just great,” I said superperkily. “Wendell’s or mine?”“Yours.”“But you want to fire me. So fire me.”“We can’t fire you. They loved you. The head guy, Leonard Daly, thought you were, I quote, ‘agreat kid, very courageous’ and a natural to do a whispering campaign. He said you hadbelievability.”“That’s too bad.”“Why? You’re not quitting!”I thought about it. “Not if you don’t want me to. Do you?”Go on, say it.298 ♥elavanilla♥“No.”“No what?”“No, we don’t want you to quit.”“Ten grand more, two assistants, and charcoal suits. Take it or leave it.”Ariella swallowed. “Okay to the money, okay to the assistants, but I can’t green-light charcoalsuits. Formula Twelve is Brazilian, we need carnival colors.”“Charcoal suits or I’m gone.”“Orange.”“Charcoal.”“Orange.”“Charcoal.”“Okay, charcoal.”It was an interesting lesson in power. The only time you truly have it is when you genuinelydon’t care whether you have it or not.“Right,” I said. “I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.
Learn to master your thoughts and watch closely what you deposit into your spirit. Speak over your life. Living in peace has transformative power.
The Legend of the Firefish,first in the Trophy Chase Trilogy by George Bryan Polivka, is a winner....filled with action,adventure, danger, intrigue,surprise,suspense....The characters Polivka created are fresh and interesting....A must read for fantasy lovers, and a highly recommended drating for others who want a good story. Rebecca LuElla Miller A Christian Worldview of Fiction Website
Dad!" Jesus yelled."Yes, son," God said."That star's light just went out," Jesus told his dad."Yes, I know," God replied."But, why?" Jesus asked."Sometimes, a man can become so self obsessed, that the devil seduces him with wealth, power and other worldly delights," God said."But aren't you worried that he will turn all the stars off?" Jesus now asked his dad.God smiled, "No, because for every star that goes out, I just put up another million or so."Jesus looked back at the night sky and sure enough, there were many more stars now. He smiled.
My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness.We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.
In order to exert influence over people, there were other things that could be used besides love. Knowledge seemed to be an equally strong force, perhaps even stronger. Whoever possessed knowledge not only had power over the changeable passions of people, but also power over their thinking, over their minds, hearts and souls.
I realized that the knowledge I gained over this period in my life was power, and it felt like a waste not to share that wealth with the world, with people who could benefit,
Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn't dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.
And so even the righteous heart is besieged by the blinding light of false knowledge. Falsity is like an ocean that presses around solitary moments of truth, treatening to overwhelm or blind the seekers of knowledge, to eradicate them in an instant of self-deceiving brilliance.Knowledge is power; it guards our souls - guard it well.
Continued observations in clinical psychological practice lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human make-up. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction - for orientation.
The basic element that will distinguish those that are for godliness from those that are promoting ungodliness is if such individuals possess the spirit of godliness and not just a form of it.
Pedagogy is always about power, because it cannot be separated from how subjectives are formed, desires mobilized, how some experiences are legitimized and others are not, or how some knowledge is considered acceptable while other forms are excluded from the curriculum.
Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; the object is a ‘fact’ which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it.
Power is the ability to bring to past a desired result. The exercise of power requires action. The key to power is in understanding how to use that which is already available to us in order to accomplish a sought after goal. The power comes from understanding and acting according to that understanding. When we live according to Truth, we thereby bring power to light. Yet we are never powerful because of ourselves, it is Truth alone that is powerful. We are, therefore, powerful only in proportion to our understanding in light of our situation. Understanding who, what, when, where, how, or why in light of our current situation is what determines the balance of power. Power is the effect of understanding. Therefore, the one who seeks to be powerful must first seek out knowledge and experience by the means of questioning and curiosity. Only through knowledge and experience may we obtain understanding. Only through understanding may we obtain power, and understanding is the power of the wise.
A man might share his wealth, but never his authority.
when you become addict in to MATERIAL things in life then the TRUE natural life start to run away from you, YES! it's can give you certain pleasure in the society but in the same time it will sabotage your true HAPPINESS of life which we could have simply with GRATITUDE and FORGIVENESS
Positive energy radiates from every word you share to a magnitude that can not be measured on scale. The vibrations he sends your way are received and absorbed into the very core of your existence. The power within his words quench the areas of your spirit that only God knows. Mortality thrives on the very essence of Godly Love
Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.
REJECTION is kind of your negative ILLUSION which has no value but it’s give you a CLUE to go for next level of your ACTION.
Your VISION and your self-willingness is the MOST powerful elements to conquer your goal
If you are not EXCITED enough at your present life its mean your future is not EXITING. Excitement will give you ENTHUSIASM and enthusiasm will give you a positive energetic LIFE STYLE which could give you a successful exiting life…
Your traditional EDUCATION is not going to CHANGE your life but the life you are experiencing that can change you. Choose a POSITIVE life STYLE with positive ATTITUDE which could bring you a life with HAPPINESS and WISDOM
Autumn is a momentum of the natures golden beauty…, so the same it’s time to find your momentum of life
How you think and create your inner world that you gonna become in your outer world. Your inner believe manifest you in the outside
CONFIDENCE is not showing off your VANITY, it’s about to be HUMBLED and KIND to others what are you truly SKILLED and PROFESSIONAL about…
You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.
Before you chase success, status, power, wealth fame or love; first fall in love with yourself - for the person you'll be if and when you get there is still the same. Success will be a painful path and an empty trophy without self acceptance, self worth or if littered with self hate.
Life may try to knock you down but be persistent with your passions - cultivate grit, resilience, tenacity and endurance success will come.
Power means different things to different people. For poets and politicians, words are power. For some, money is power. For most of Earth’s history, weaponry and resources have constituted power. My grandfather always told me—and I believed for many years—that knowledge was power. But the funny thing about power is that no matter what you think it is, or how much you think you have, it’s the people above and all around you who get the final say.
What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible. There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power. All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told.
An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.
If the surprise outcome of the recent UK referendum - on whether to leave or remain in the European Union - teaches us anything, it is that supposedly worthy displays of democracy in action can actually do more harm than good. Witness a nation now more divided; an intergenerational schism in the making; both a governing and opposition party torn to shreds from the inside; infinitely more complex issues raised than satisfactory solutions provided. It begs the question 'Was it really all worth it' ?
Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.
Someone asked me once at a talk why I so stress the positive with my students yet am such an unstinting critic of those who run our culture and who are killing the planet. I answered immediately, “Power. If I’ve got power or authority over someone, it’s my responsibility to use that only to help them. It’s my job to accept and praise them into becoming who they are.
Women have been brought up with the false sense that they have all the options in the world. We don’t understand that the culture really isn’t offering us all of these options – there still are very strong pressures to conform. We have to step outside the culture to be able to make choices that will really give us what we want. But we lack the psychic mechanisms to do this, to really choose.
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.
But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.
For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.
I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
When you hide your flaws you only give them the power to dominate your life. Every time that you fake who you are to cover your flaws, they become stronger and visible to your own eye. You become comfortable with working every day to hide them from everyone else's view. And maybe you try to show the world those flaws but they are rejected because you've hidden them for so long that they couldn't possibly be a true part of you. But then, you show them to the world every day, day after day, and they finally start to disappear from view because they really never were a really big deal in the first place. Accept your flaws or you will never truly be able to live with them.
Do not ever think that you are too small to make a difference in the world. You may not be able to change the entire world but you are able to change the world you see and the world of the people around you. Let your being resonate as a positive influence to those that make up your world.
Things will happen in your life that you have no control over but that doesn't mean you are at the complete mercy of the unknown. You will always have power over your reaction to the outside world. That is your power. It is the power that can change your life if you choose to use it. Never believe that you have no control over your life, you have so much more control over your life than you can even imagine. So be active in changing your life.
Nobody but you have to believe in your dreams to make them a reality.
I’ve never been motivated by money – it doesn’t drive Me.
My name is Jasmine Lewis, and this is my story. It’s a cautionary tale about money, sex, and power, but I guess those words are redundant. Money is always about sex and power. And sex is always about power. And why have power if you can’t have sex and money?But anyway, this is a story about money, sex, and power. This is the story of The Sugar Baby Club.
Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.
When we feel ourselves very weak, life will look immensely powerful and ruthless! The extent of our power is the key factor in determining how powerful life is! The stronger we are the weaker the life will be!
Stop giving people the power to control your smile, your worth, your attitude and your day. Don’t give anyone that much power over your life.
There are two powerful fuels, two forces; motivation and inspiration. To be motivated you need to know what your motives are. Over time - and to sustain you through it - your motivation must become an inner energy; a 'motor' driving you forward, passionately, purposefully, wisely and compassionately... come what may, every day. Inspiration is an outer - worldly - energy that you breathe and draw in. It may come from many places, faces, spaces and stages - right across the ages. It is where nature, spirit, science, mind and time meet, dance, play and speak. It keeps you outward facing and life embracing. But you must be open-minded and open-hearted to first let it in and then let it out again. Together - blended, combined and re-entwined - motivation and inspiration bring connectivity, productivity, creativity and boundless possibilities that is not just 'self' serving but enriching to all humanity and societies...just as it should be.
Instead of you pouring out your life and giving out your life and exchanging it for a porridge called salary, instead of selling out your life bit by bit until you are old and empty and until you become so old that they send you off to die in retirement, you should come to the realization that you could actually multiply and reproduce your life through the power of time conversion.
When you understand that through the power of conversion in solitude you can become great, so many things you’ve been wasting your time on will no longer interest you. You will even run away from some friends.
The TSA liked having fresh agents on the job. Fresh agents with a clear mind and steady hand. Time travel wasn’t for the faint of heart. The pay was good though, but as Scrooby had decided long ago, that even if he didn’t get paid for it, the thrill alone was payment enough. Then again, the TSA realized they couldn’t afford to have disgruntled employees with too much time on their hands and the power of the gods at their fingertips, so the pay was very, very good. Debriefing was routine. And how he hated routine! His supervisor was a senior agent called Guy Krummeck, a rather drab character who liked his shiny silver suits almost as much as he liked to go over every little detail at least three times. Minimum. This time everything went right, so it went quick. Twenty minutes later, tired, he clocked out and went home to his small apartment. Tomorrow, after all, was another day again.
[The American President] has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues.… The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
Power comes at a price, love," Veliss replied through bared teeth, maintaining the smile she offered to the townsfolk lining the square."What power?""All power. The power to rule, to kill, or, in your case this fine morning, the power to incite the lust of the old goat you're about to meet.""Lust? I have no desire to incite lust in anyone."Veliss turned to her with a quizzical expression, her smile suddenly genuine. "Then I'm afraid you're in for a lifetime of disappointment.
[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned.It is a vacuous answer... To say that 'God made the world' is simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it is anything, is an admission of ignorance. thundered over the horizon and in a few decades of observation and thought . . . arrived at an answer.I regard teaching religion as purveying lies. I came here today to de-corrupt you all.
In his fight against the powers of the surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived from the over-estimation of the individual’s own intellectual operations, from the belief in the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, which, incidentally, we come across again in our obsessional neurotics.
Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations, threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might b e in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that h as now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual co st to life.Through mechanization, automation, cybernetic direction, this authoritarian technics has at last successfully overcome its most serious weakness: its original dependence upon resistant, sometimes actively disobedient servomechanisms, still human enough to harbor purposes that do not always coincide with those of the system.Like the earliest form of authoritarian technics, this new technology is marvellously dynamic and productive: its power in every form tends to increase without limits, in quantities that defy assimilation and defeat control, whether we are thinking of the output of scientific knowledge or of industrial assembly lines. To maximize energy, speed, or automation, without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves. As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race. Even Ashurbanipal and Genghis Khan performed their gory operations under normal human limits.The center of authority in this new system is no longer a visible personality, an all-powerful king: even in totalitarian dictatorships the center now lies in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent: all its human components, even the technical and managerial elite, even the sacred priesthood of science, who alone have access to the secret knowledge by means of which total control is now swiftly being effected, are themselves trapped by the very perfection of the organization they have invented. Like the Pharoahs of the Pyramid Age, these servants of the system identify its goods with their own kind of well-being: as with the divine king, their praise of the system is an act of self-worship; and again like the king, they are in the grip of an irrational compulsion to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority. In this new systems-centered collective, this Pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike job's God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated.
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.
I love money because money is power, the power to invite my friends for lunch and pay the bill without expecting anything in return, the power to give twenty dollars to beggar just because I can, the power to offer an expensive remote control helicopter to children and create a huge smile in them, the power to wait for the ones you love to love you back just because you don’t need to waste your time like they do.
When the world shifts its focus on heart over mind, we will finally experience a beautiful global village for our children.
It’s okay to experience the flow of all emotions; however, if we get caught up in feeling pity for others and take on the responsibility of being their ‘savior’, we often take away their power to ‘save’ themselves. If I see someone as ‘messed up’ then I am projecting my ‘messed up’ vibration onto them, so I am unable to hold space. Yet, if I already view them as whole, well, and beautiful – then I am able to be a vibrational key (vessel of Spirit) that uplifts their energy so that it may come into alignment with being whole, well, and beautiful. It’s not that I do any of the healing; I’m simply a mirror reflecting acceptance and loving them for exactly who they are, right where they are. That is all that is ever truly asked of us, to accept and to love.
White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.
fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, becasue thay see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine. for these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which every thing can be produced in which all things are done without the hands of the gods.
The more we're thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.
Fear is a lethal killer of dreams, the greatest cancer that has beset passion, and a ruthless thief of lives stolen and buried in the decay of lives squandered. Yet the greatest tragedy of all is that the fear that destroys us is rarely the monster it pretends to be, nor does it possess anything close to the power that we grant it. Therefore, it is only a killer, a cancer and a thief because we empower it to be so.
Over the years we seem to have become habituated, even addicted, to the notion of radical threat, threat of the kind that can make virtually anything seem expendable if it does not serve an immediate, desperate purpose of self-defense -- as defined by people often in too high a state of alarm to make sound judgments about what real safety would be or how it might be achieved, and who feel that their duty to the rest of us is to be very certain we share their alarm. Putting to one side the opportunities offered by the coercive power of fear, charity obliges me to assume that their alarm is genuine, though i grant that in doing so I again raise questions about the soundness of their judgment.
Surrendering is intentionally laying down the power I possess. And have I considered that the power I lay down is often more powerful than that which I’m laying it down in front of? Therefore, I would be wise to recognize that surrender is less the absence of power and more the presence of fear.
Christians sometimes make themselves into elephants afraid of mice. You have the Creator of the universe on your side; not to mention, you've been given eternal life. 'Whom or what shall you fear?' To be afraid of anything other than God himself is like an insult to God.
I’m not sure how old I was when I first tried looking in the mirror and telling myself, with a shiver of pride and a warning prickle of something like fear, ‘I am the most powerful person in the world.’ In a way, it was true. My hands and mind could do things no one else’s could, but I was too young then to understand that some power—the kind that really matters—comes from other people. And what good is being faster, or stronger, or smarter than everyone else when it leaves you all alone?
You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.
Remember that the choices you make, and the reasons you make them, shape your destiny. Remember your free will...And remember, what the True One has made is supposed to bring balance and unity, not anger, fear or revenge. Do not fear, what is yours to use. Only beware the ends to which it is turned, and know the means will truly determine the outcome.
The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that he's not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on - the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves.
Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well.The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.
One day, you muster the courage and let go of the fear. In a brief moment of insanity, you give wings to the stories you had wanted to tell; some you didn't even know were in you. In that instant, something about you changes. You are born again.That is not to say the fear and worry and second-guessing go away. They are there. But you learn to cope with them. You learn that they don't control you at all times. In those fleeting moments of freedom, you have the power. You know you are not perfect. You realize no one was born perfect. No one. Rome wasn’t built in a day either.A weird thing happens when you get a glimpse of that side of you. A child-like zeal possesses you. It is addictive. You discover your voice. You matter. Maybe not to the world, yet. You matter to yourself. You are worthy. You are alive. You can be.
Ô, the wine of a womanfrom heaven is sent, more perfect than allthat a man can invent.When she came to my bed and begged me with sighsnot to tempt her towards passion nor actions unwise, I told her I’d spare her and kissed her closed eyes, then unbraided her body of its clothing disguise.While our bodies were nude bathed in candlelight fineI devoured her mouth, tender lips divine;and I drank through her thighs her feminine wine.Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,more perfect than all that a man can invent.
Ineffective leadership, is the plight of followers who anoint power to the autocratic persons who's visions are not founded but are rather arbitrary in their nature.
Do not allow your happiness to be controlled by the thoughts of others. People are happy for you one minute and then the next they are looking down their noses at you. You have to find within yourself the kind of happiness that withstands the ups and downs of life. No one should have the power to limit or repress your happiness.
In most cases, you look for what you don't have. It limits and stagnates you. And unfortunately, you don't know know how to use what you do have. Yes, you've got your Brain, Google, and most importantly, you've got Youtube. Use'em to your advantage! They are powerful channels you can harness for maximum accomplishments in your life.
Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do and doing it at the right time to get the desired result. It is also the correct application of knowledge.
There is no gift of principles, you must apply them if you want to move forward.
You cannot occupy a proper place on earth without wisdom. It is the principal thing you must have.
Every crisis is a wisdom crisis. If you have no peace around you then you lack wisdom.
A lot of people pray for power, house, financial breakthrough, wealth etc. But only few ask God for wisdom. There are so many great power pack man and women of God who lack wisdom.
That you are a born again Christian does not mean you will automatically succeed except you follow God's principles. Never forget faith without good work is dead.
You cannot have a dream and expect someone else's faith to make it a reality for you. Habakuk 2:4
Have you ever reached to a point where you asked God if the assignment is really from Him. In your account you have just 100 dollars and He is asking you to execute a 400 million dollar project. Have you reached to the point that you consider going further will make no sense? Have you reached the point where you asked God are you sure you are still with me?I just found myself in that Junction now. Turning back ....to realise I have gone too far for Him to forsake me. Moving forward I heard the voice saying ...be still and know that I am your God. Giving up.....Couldn't find it in my dictionary.Moral of the lesson. God cannot give you an assignment that is equal to your pocket. If it suits your pocket it is definitely not from God. Remember God will not take glory where nothing happen.
God's word will produce with your level of understanding. The much you can understand it, the more wisdom you are privileged to have.
The money you are looking for is not in any country, phd or your designer outlook, it is in wisdom. Solomon never prayed for wealth but he asked for wisdom.
Wisdom cannot be bought from the walmart, it can only come from the Holy Spirit of God.
A man with wisdom will always have a solution no matter how big his challenges may be. Wisdom makes you a problem solver.
There are too many stars in the sky and none of them is overshadowing the other. Don't let anybody be a threat to your growth.
School does not make people, it is learning that makes people great, that is why you see first class students fail and poor. The world is not ruled by those who went to school, it is ruled by those who learn everyday.
Understand something people, we will be hated by many in the name of Christ, ridiculed, mocked, stoned, slaughtered. We will be fined, jailed and killed for our love for Christ. You are supposed to see better with your eyes today, how close this is happening, just prepare your heart and soul to be braver than Peter and not deny Christ in the moment your life might be in jeopardy for Him and what you believe. Apostle Pauls says to live is Christ to die is gain.
If you want to see the beauty of any fish, throw it into the water, you will see how best it can swim because that is its source. Do you want to see the beauty in you? Don't look in the mirror, don't put on makeups, no jewelleries or expensive designer clothes, just go back and reconnect to your source and I bet, the best of you will show up. Until you return back to God, your best won't come out because He is your source.
Wisdom is the mother of solutions. You cannot upgrade in wisdom and lack solutions and you cannot have a wisdom and be stranded in any challenge you face.
If want to become a person with vision, get back and reconnect to your source.
Negative prophecies are reversible. The Lord reveals to conquer. You are created to reverse any negative with your prayers and the word of God.
Even with fasting and prayers you still need wisdom. At the root of every great accomplishment is wisdom. In all your getting get wisdom first.
You cannot use another man's leg to run your race. Wives stop waiting for your husbands to do everything. For God's sake make an impact. Nobody is a threat to your development.
I am the most important person to me. I am the most important person in the entire universe to me. I am the centre of my own universe.
Faith is never connected to safe. There is no faith without tension. For a rubber band to function to it's elasticity, it has to experience a tension. Saints of God who has no tension has no function.
People would want to get safe and come to Christ because they see the evidence in your life not because you quote the scriptures to them.
There's supposed to be more value in your life than spending more than sixty hours in a week in a place you don't care about and in an environment they don't care about you.
If satan succeds in blinding your mind, he has succeeded in arresting you because anything that can stop you from believing can stop your future.
No satan can unsettle what God has settled.
Without you discovering your true picture, it will be hard to have a glorious future. It is the discovery of what you have inside and the pursuit of it that can guarantee a glorious future
If knowledge is lacking, your destruction is inevitable. Hosea 4:6
It is impossible to enjoy divine protection without the word of God. You must be a word addict.
The church preach so much about power in the kingdom of God but we don't talk about wisdom. Everybody goes for power forgeting that power without wisdom can be disastrous.
Blind minds are worst than blind eyes. That you have eyes does not mean that you have vision. Visionaries do not look they see whlie people look.
Do you want to acquire God's own wisdom? Relate with the Holy Spirit. Be a seeker of divine guidance by the Holy Spirit. You can't be a man or woman of solution without God.
The world is full of problems and I bet you the problems will continue to exist but what will make you relevant to the world is when you have answers to the questions the world asks. You can only be useful when you have the answers to the questions of the world. The best way you provide solutions and answers to those challenges is through wisdom.
People with vision sees opportunity where there is problem. They see money not problem.
I think it will be better if we can live our life as if Christ is going to return today and plan our live as if it is hundred years off. Keep living, serving and most of all be prepared.
Wherever problem persist, wisdom is lacking. There is no problem anywhere except wisdom problem. Wisdom provides solutions where there is complications.
The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy and his followers do the same. Be watchful and keep that in mind.
When wisdom comes, transformation comes. Wisdom makes the difference between the succeeding man and the failing man.
Even though it may look like the wicked is gaining ground, God is still in control. We need to pray for our nations, pray for others, pray for forgiveness and mercy over people. We need to love no matter who we are talking to, whether they are Atheist, Moslems, Lesbians, Homosexuals or Pagans. We need to love them and share the love of God with them and not judge and see if we can rebuild our broken nations.
Poor means when we lack things in our lives. There are two types of poverty. ...those that need food and shelter and those that need God in their lives. We are called to service to help both group of people as much as we can.
Sure we all need money but what do you really focus on? It is a matter of the heart. If your thoughts are on material and worldly things, no good fruits can come out of it.Seek the kingdom of God first and the other things shall be added unto you not vice versa.
If all you are looking for is a miracle you are wide open to follow the antichrist and the false prophets because they are going to have a big league of signs and wonders ministry.If signs and wonders do not bring glory and honour to Jesus Christ, then you must be watching a false prophet whose anointing does not come from the Holy Spirit of God.
Hope, strive and try to be more like Christ until the day we will see Him. Let Him find you faithfully and in obedient serving Him. He is coming quicker than people think.
The closer we try to get to God, the more we will hate to sin in our own lives, the more we are saddened by the thoughts that runs through our minds. I also think that the more we draw closer to God, the more God will honour us and will open doors for the right things to happen in our life.
I have the mind of Christ. The best life you could ever live is the one that your creator destined you for. The one He made you for. He has given us everything we need ......... to become like Him. To reach to your potentials. Worship Him in spirit and in truth.
When we are preoccupied with wealth and material acquisitions, it chokes God's word in us and makes it unfruitful. But if we follow His plan of being prosperous you will enjoy the blessings of this life.
Our life is not in stuff, focus your attention on Christ where it should be. Prosperity and wealth has damaged the body of Christ. God takes pleasure in the prosperity of his children but don't replace him with material.
We are so much distracted nowadays. There is so much distractions in the world today call it internet, media, football matches etc. but don't let it consume you.
Rebuilding is something that is practically difficult than starting over from nothing.
No man's advice can change you unless you speak to yourself. Bible school or seminars can't change you, going to church can't change you except you decide to change.Psalm 139:23 - 24
Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,more perfect than all that a man can invent.
It has been passed down in many texts of old and by the word of mouth; that no matter the strength of the weapons of man, there is only one thing powerful enough to defeat them all... The power of love.
Love, it is timeless. It can transcend the very limits of time and space, as long as it stays forever true in our hearts.
I need someone who knows to enjoy life. Someone who'll get high with me at the Pere - Lechaise cemetery. Someone who'll lose their breath running trough the Louvre. Someone who'll go to coffee with a good book ( Fyodor Dostoyevsky, L. Tolstoy, Voltaire, A. Camus, Oscar Wilde, Gustave Flaubert ). During the weekends to the cafe de Flore, and after that lunch at Ritz. Someone who'll get lost in Paris in the middle of the night. Someone who'll lay beside Seine, drink wine and listen to Florence and Machine, Banks, Borns, Hurts, Bjork, Tom Odelle... Someone who can sit in front of S.Dali's paintings for hours and not talk. Someone who wants to live. Someone who wants to travel and see the world. Someone who'll look at the stars for hours, talk about life, someone who is not afraid of death.
My mom and dad refused to believe that people who had grown up together in peace and friendship, had gone to the same schools, spoken the same language, and listened to the same music, could overnight be blinded by ethnic hatred and start to brutally kill one another. They simply didn't accept as true that less than two years of a multiparty system and competition for power could poison people's brains so much.
Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate: only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty! You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure! Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world . . .
We will never know peace and stability in the world without balance. And we will never know balance without justice for all. Yet, justice exists only where there is fairness and equality -- when every man and country is treated and viewed equally. No country should be given power over another. In addition, no country should be granted privileges that are denied to others. No one country has the authority to decide which country will be embargoed, denied to protect itself, and will be favored based on the weight of their resources. Eliminate the hypocrisy.
The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them – for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn’t entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between people.
Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Station is the paradox of the world of my people, the limitation of our power within the hunger for power. It is gained through treachery and invites treachery against those who gain it. Those most powerful in Menzoberranzan spend their days watching over their shoulders, defending against the daggers that would find their backs. Their deaths usually come from the front." -Drizzt Do'Urden
The key to staying unintimidated is to convince yourself that the person you're facing is a mere mortal, no different from you-- which is in fact the truth. See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities. Cutting the other person down to size will help your keep your mental balance.
I was done with hesitation. It wasn't just that we'd run out of options, or that so much was riding on the firebird's power. I'd simply grown ruthless enough or selfish enough to take another creature's life. But I missed the girl who had shown the stag mercy, who had been strong enough to turn away from the lure of power, who had believed in something more. Another casualty of this war.
Shame on the misguided, the blinded, the distracted and the divided. Shame. You have allowed deceptive men to corrupt and desensitize your hearts and minds to unethically fuel their greed.
Dr. Chanter, in his brilliant History of Human Thought in the Twentieth Century, has made the suggestion that only a very small proportion of people are capable of acquiring new ideas of political or social behaviour after they are twenty-five years old. On the other hand, few people become directive in these matters until they are between forty and fifty. Then they prevail for twenty years or more. The conduct of public affairs therefore is necessarily twenty years or more behind the living thought of the times. This is what Dr. Chanter calls the "delayedrealisation of ideas".In the less hurried past this had not been of any great importance, but in the violent crises of the Revolutionary Period it became a primary fact. It is evident now that whatever the emergency, however obvious the new problem before our species in the nineteen-twenties, it was necessary for the whole generation that had learned nothing and could learn nothing from the Great War and its sequelae, to die out before any rational handling of world affairs could even begin. The cream of the youth of the war years had been killed; a stratum of men already middle-aged remained in control, whose ideas had already set before the Great War. It was, says Chanter, an inescapable phase. The world of the Frightened Thirties and the Brigand Forties was under the dominion of a generation of unteachable, obstinately obstructive men, blinded men, miseducating, misleading the baffled younger people for completely superseded ends. If they could have had their way, they would have blinded the whole world for ever. But the blinding was inadequate, and by the Fifties all this generation and its teachings and traditions were passing away, like a smoke-screen blown aside.Before a few years had passed it was already incredible that in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century the whole political life of the world was still running upon the idea of competitive sovereign empires and states. Men of quite outstanding intelligence were still planning and scheming for the "hegemony" of Britain or France or Germany or Japan; they were still moving their armies and navies and air forces and making their combinations and alliances upon the dissolving chess-board of terrestrial reality. Nothing happened as they had planned it; nothing worked out as they desired; but still with a stupefying inertia they persisted. They launched armies, they starved and massacred populations. They were like a veterinary surgeon who suddenly finds he is operating upon a human being, and with a sort of blind helplessness cuts and slashes more and more desperately, according to the best equestrian rules. The history of European diplomacy between 1914 and 1944 seems now so consistent a record of incredible insincerity that it stuns the modern mind. At the time it seemed rational behaviour. It did not seem insincere. The biographical material of the period -- and these governing-class people kept themselves in countenance very largely by writing and reading each other's biographies -- the collected letters, the collected speeches, the sapient observations of the leading figures make tedious reading, but they enable the intelligent student to realise the persistence of small-society values in that swiftly expanding scene.Those values had to die out. There was no other way of escaping from them, and so, slowly and horribly, that phase of the moribund sovereign states concluded.
Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most...A lord may send his army hither and thither, but the true testing of his power is in those places where his army is not...Has he sent its long fingers far enough through the backstreets and alleys, into the drinking dens and the lending-houses, so that he may gather them unto himself and hold them firm without a single swordsman?
The slow, mismanaged arrival of armored vehicles and bulletproof plates for flak vests was only the most conspicuous demonstration of how the Iraq War, like every war -- just or unjust, won or lost -- became a conspiracy of the old and powerful against the young and dutiful.
We could see in our own country as late as the 1960's and 1970's how good Christian and Jewish men, the pillars of our society, when they acceded to political and military power, could sit calmly and cooly in their air-conditioned offices in Washington and cold-bloodedly, without a qualm or a moral quiver, plan and order the massacre of hundred of thousands of men, women and children and the destruction of their homes, farms, churches, schools and hospitals in a faraway Asian land of poor peasants who had never threatened us in the slightest, who were incapable of it. Almost as savage was the acceptance by most of us citizens of such barbarism, until, toward the end, our slumbering - or should one say, cowardly? - consciences were aroused.
Inequality and poverty, unhealth and no wealth are hand in hand. And if we are all born equal that should be true in all lands. We cannot divide the world between poor and rich countries. It's like saying the ones are good, the others are junkies. That can only increase more prejudice, miseries and sorrow. Turning the wheel today it will lead to a better tomorrow.
Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?
Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.
If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.
What naive garbage. People don't want freedom anymore--even those to whom freedom is a kind of religion are afraid of it, like trembling acolytes who make sacrifices to some pagan god. People want their governments to keep secrets from them. They want the hand of law to be brutal. They are so terrified by their own power that they will vote to have it taken out of their hands. Look at America. Look at the sharia states. Freedom is a dead philosophy, Alif. The world is returning to its natural state, to the rule of the weak by the strong. Young as you are, it's you who are out of touch, not me.
These observations bring out the fact that, whenever liberty is regarded merely as the power to do something which it is desired to do, the tyrant need only base himself on the desires of the masses to suppress the liberties cherished by a few. But can anyone fail to see that the very concrete problem here posed is the problem of the sation of satisfactions, and not the problem of liberty at all? How, then, has it come about that we have drifted away from what we were discussing? This is the very definition of liberty which we allowed as our starting-point. Its development makes it clear that the thing discussed does not merit the fair name of liberty.It is certain that every man desires addition to his power and chafes at the obstacles which stand in his way; it is also certain that the quest for a power which is wider binds him to a growing dependence on other men; it is certain, lastly, that this dependence creates a growing tendency to quarrel about distribution. All that is important, but it is the story not of liberty but of human imperialism. And whoever thinks to see the essence of liberty in the power of man is is utterly lacking in any true feeling for liberty.
From birth to death and further onAs we were born and introduced into this world,We had a gift hard to express by wordAnd somewhere in our continuous road,It kind of lost it sense and turned.There was that time we sure remember,When everything was now and 'till foreverChildren with no worries and no regrets,The only goal was making a few friends.But later on everything has changed,By minds that had it all arrangedTo bring the people into stress,Into creating their own mess.We have been slaved by our own mind,Turned into something out of our kindSlowly faded away from the present time,Forced to believe in lies, in fights and crime.They made it clearly a fight of the ego,A never ending war that won't just goThey made it a competitive game,To seek selfish materialistic fame.They turned us one against eachother,Man against man, brother against brotherDividing us by religion and skin color,Making us fight to death over a dollar.Making us lose ourselves in sadly thoughts,Wasting our days by living in the pastDepressed and haunted by the memories,And yet still hoping to fly in our dreams.Some of us tried learning how to dance,Step after step, giving our soul a new chanceSome of us left our ego vanish into sounds,Thus being aware of our natural bounce.Some tried expressing in their rhymes,The voice of a generation which never diesThey reached eternity through poetryLeaving the teachings that shall fulfill the prophecyOthers have found their way through spirituality,Becoming conscious of the human dualitySeeking the spiritual enlightenment,Of escaping an ego-oriented fightingScience, philosophy, religion,Try to explain the human origin.Maybe changes are yet to come,And it shall be better for someDeath's for the spirit not an end,But a relieving of the embodimentSo I believe that furthermore,We'll understand the power of our soulBut leaving behind all we know,And all that we might not yet knowIt all resumes to that certain truth,That we all seek to once conclude.
At its root, the logic is that of the Grand Inquisitor, who bitterly assailed Christ for offering people freedom and thus condemning them to misery. The Church must correct the evil work of Christ by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they most desire and need: absolute submission. It must “vanquish freedom” so as “to make men happy” and provide the total “community of worship” that they avidly seek. In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, private profit, called free enterprise. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the Grand Inquisitor, who employs the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority “to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness” and to deny them the freedom of choice they so fear and despise, so the “cool observers” must create the “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications” that keep the ignorant and stupid masses disciplined and content.
Let no one ever intimidate you, you are standing on no one's ground. But again, some have claimed the earth as their own and usurped power from the rest of us. But they are usurpers; power belongs to every one of us. Seek it as much as possible. There is no shame in that. In fact it's a necessity. Either you have power or you are trampled to death in the stampede to get to the top
As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.
Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.
To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices.
Watching my father plan and strategize for the resistance has taught me about trust.” She leaned forward. “Personal trust is very different from political trust, my lady. The first thrives on faith. The second requires proof, whether it be upfront or covert.” Awkwardly, she patted my hand. “His Majesty has always been a powerful man. Perhaps he has never had to distinguish between the two.
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
he'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they this weilded "power" barbarically so the world would not find them out
Not one little fellow need fear that he will be forbidden to pluck his shining grape from the cluster of political Power, that fruit reputed to be so full of wealth and glory. Can’t every gang become a club? and every club an assembly? an assembly, a convention? a convention, a senate? and isn’t a senate meant to rule? And what senate ever ruled without a man to rule it? And what did it all require? – Daring! – Aha! Well said! – What! is that all it takes? – Yes, all! The ones who have arrived say so. – Then courage, numskulls, give tongue and run for it! – That’s how it’s done
Rejoicing in his absolute authority, the single egoist will exploit it methodically, whereas a mêlée of egoists will bring about a ruinous disorder and a disastrous cleavage, because the contrariety of the appetites to be satisfied will prevent the satisfaction of any single one. Clearly, then, the effect of the pursuit of private ends under cover of the public good will be worse if there are many with a hand in power than if there is only one.
Failing to indict a criminal sitting president sends the message that those in power are above the law.
The struggle for power conducted along logical lines is much more likely to occur in smoke-filled rooms than at the polls. The party system is a grid, a filter, a meat chopper, through which issues are processed for the consuming public. The Civil War confirmed our preference for this arrangement. We like the fog of politics, with the occasional drama of the flash of a lightning bolt that, happily, is usually nothing more than a near miss.
Our minds become slaves to those we see as having total power to control us and to cause pain to us. We are quick to give up control of ourselves to those who have the power to rule us as long as they also have the power to feed us. This is the fundamental construct of a feudal society.
Lying bed, I listened to them, and I wonder now where in truth the real power rested that night: whether in the hands of men like Grimston, men like Edwards. Whether it slept with the King at Oxford in an ordinary bed, dormant, like a taint in the blood. Whether it rested on the waiting benches of the Commons, or whether it went home with their plain occupants, like a shilling in each of their pockets.I think the truth is that, rather than resting in any one of several places, all real power had gone loose by that night through the realm; and the land might have belonged to any man. Any man with the will to say, 'This is what we shall do.
Wolves regularly attacked their rivals in power, so the idea of killing to gain position was neither alien nor repulsive to her. The use of assassins she had filed as yet another of the curious tools - like swords and bows — that humans created to make up for their lack of personal armament. What she still had to puzzle through was the subtle strategies involved in killing those who were expected to inherit power rather than those who held the power itself.
When we use power and group identity, we hold ourselves separate from other groups of people, and demonstrate our beliefs that some of use are more deserving than others, and there are not enough good things to go around. This blinkers us, There are a myriad of other ways humans can interact to meet the needs of us all.
You are looking at this wrong. You think I hold my territory by the might of my fist. But that's not it. I hold my territory by consent of the governed. I think it is a very American concept, which might be why you never looked for it." — Adam Hauptman, Columbia Basin Pack Alpha, to Iacopo (Jacob) Bonarata, Lord of the Night (master vampire of Milan)
I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.
There are hundreds of intelligent and big brains in every country in the world to run that country successfully but somehow and often either an immoral stupid or a charlatan imbecile comes to power!
... The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuing political values with conviction.
I think this business of good vs. evil is of no interest to the power hungry
If you are my food, how am I supposed to feel pity towards you? That would mean starvation for me. “A hungry leopard told a fallen, panting, imploring gazelle
The universe runs on the principle that one who can exert the most evil on other creatures runs the show.
We have nothing to destroy," said Rud. "All these things are done for already. They are falling in all over the world. They are dead. No need for destructive activities. But if we have nothing to destroy we have much to clear away. That's different. What is needed is a brand-new common-sense reorganisation of the world's affairs, and that's what we have to give them. I can't imagine how the government sleeps of nights. I should lie awake at night listening all the time for the trickle of plaster that comes before a smash. Ever since they began blundering in the Near East and Spain, they've never done a single wise thing. This American adventure spells disaster. Plainly. Australia has protested already. India now is plainly in collapse. Everyone who has been there lately with open eyes speaks of the vague miasma of hatred in the streets. We don't get half the news from India. Just because there exists no clear idea whatever of a new India, it doesn't mean that the old isn't disintegrating. Things that are tumbling down, tumble down. They don'twait to be shown the plans of the new building. The East crumbles. All over the world it becomes unpleasant to be a foreigner, but an Englishman now can't walk in a bazaar without a policeman behind him...
Life is politics, you do it or it does you
In politics what you see is not what you get
Once you are in power, never forget those who put you there. Deal with those who think they can do better than you and those who think you are god's representative on earth. Deal with each other according to his actions
Power hungry=life loving
Politicians know it's a game of power, every politician at every level, even in the common of mortals.
The Golden Mean is for the weakling, it was not meant for the likes of Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Pharaohs, or Hitlers of the world
Nothing is sweeter and addictive than power, the unlucky soul this demon possesses, if he is not sacrificed on its altar will sacrifice others himself to get it
If anyone rises to power, it's not only because he could, but also because the stars were aligned in his favor. Many with apparent means to take it failed simply because they weren't destined for the honor
Powerless=lifeless.
Can anyone maintain power without lying? It looks to me like living without breathing. Morality apart, I think some evils are part and parcel of nature and we cannot do without them. Sometimes evil is even necessary to run this evil nature.
It's unfortunate to be bitten by political ambition. The deadly disease causes a man to want to access power by all means either by sacrificing others to its altar or by sacrificing himself when he fails.
It doesn't take ten years of study, you don't need to go to the University, to find out that this is a damned good world gone wrong. Gone wrong, because it is being monkeyed with by people too greedy and mean and wrong-hearted altogether to do the right thing by our common world. They've grabbed it and they won't let go. They might lose their importance; they might lose their pull. Everywhere it's the same. Beware of the men you make your masters. Beware of the men you trust.We've only got to be clear-headed to sing the same song and play the same game all over the world, we common men. We don't want Power monkeyed with, we don't want Work and Goods monkeyed with, and, above all, we don't want Money monkeyed with. That's the elements of politics everywhere. When these things go wrong, we go wrong. That's how people begin to feel it and see it in America. That's how we feel it here -- when we look into our minds. That's what common people feel everywhere. That'swhat our brother whites -- "poor whites" they call them -- in those towns in South Carolina are fighting for now. Fighting our battle. Why aren't we with them? We speak the same language; we share the same blood. Who has been keeping us apart from them for a hundred and fifty-odd years? Ruling classes. Politicians. Dear old flag and all that stuff!Our school-books never tell us a word about the American common man; and his school-books never tell him a word about us. They flutter flags between us to keep us apart. Split us up for a century and a half because of some fuss about taxing tea. And what are our wonderful Labour and Socialist and Communist leaders doing to change that? What are they doing to unite us English-speaking common men together and give us our plain desire? Are they doing anything more for us than the land barons and thefactory barons and the money barons? Not a bit of it! These labour leaders of to-day mean to be lords to-morrow. They are just a fresh set of dishonest trustees. Look at these twenty-odd platforms here! Mark their needless contradictions! Their marvellous differences on minor issues. 'Manoeuvres!' 'Intrigue.' 'Personalities.' 'Monkeying.' 'Don't trust him, trust me!' All of them at it. Mark how we common men are distracted, how we are set hunting first after one red herring and then after another, for the want of simple, honest interpretation...
[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.
For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?
With regard to power, women don’t have the vanity men have. They don’t need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can’t learn that...
Women need to learn to accept the incredible blessing that God created us to be. When God created Eve, He termed her a comparable mate, a helper to man. When God took Jesus, He gave us the Holy Spirit as a Helper and Comforter. The lie is: people think a helper is weak. The truth is: without help, what can anyone accomplish?There is indeed great power in who we are as women. We indeed need to let go of the lies. We also need to embrace the truth.
The patriarchy longs for the days 'when men were men' and women were oppressed, subservient - and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it - and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and calling it 'love'. Some love. How can oppression and power over another person's life ever be 'love'?
In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to make feel like a somebody whenever he is in his own yard a man who is a nobody whenever he is in his employer’s yard.
Look at these magnificent women, I thought, created in such misogynistic and hierarchical societies, yet they are the subversive centers around which the plot is shaped. Everything is supposed to revolve around the male hero. But it is the active presence of these women that changes events and diverts the man's life from its traditional course, that shocks him into changing his very mode of existence. In the classical Iranian narrative, active women dominate the scene; they make things happen.
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.
As Atwood concludes after a random and informal sampling, men and women differ markedly in the 'scope of their threatenability': 'Why do men feel threatened by woman?' I asked a male friend of mine....'[M]en are bigger, most of the time...and they have on the average a lot more money and power.' 'They're afraid women will laugh at them,' he said. 'Undercut their world view.' Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, 'Why do women feel threatened by men?' 'They're afraid of being killed,' they said'.
They wanted their girls to be safe. To do what they had to do to conform, to defer, to survive, to grow up. They wanted their girls never to grow up. Never to stop burning. They wanted their girls to say fuck it, to see through the lies, to know their own strength. They wanted their girls to believe the things could be different this time, and they wanted it to be true.They wondered, sometimes, if they'd made a mistake. If it was dangerous, taming the wild, stealing away the words a girl might use to name her secret self. They wondered at the consequences of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong. They wondered, if knowing was power, what happened to power that refused to know itself; they wondered what happened that couldn't be satisfied, to pain that couldn't be felt, a rage that couldn't be spoken.
Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, who have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfriend.
You are an ordinary person till the day you realise that you have the power to change the world!
Clever nations are the ones who keep changing their governments! Because power must change hands otherwise it will get spoiled and rot!
Think not of the fragility of life, but of the power of books, when mere words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.
...a much younger woman, one of those round-faced, tiny-featured women who were touted as beauties though they were not in fact particularly beautiful. They were simply the daughters of wealthy families powerful enough to demand that the concept of beauty be expanded to include them.
Nature has two powers: Her own physical power and the spiritual power of her beauty!
Everything is within your power,and your power is within you.
Having a positive attitude gives you the power to uplift, the power to create change, the power to motivate, the power to inspire, the power to influence, the power to cultivate happiness, and the list goes on.
A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.
Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.
In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there.I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.
The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.
Xerxes, I read, ‘halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction’ the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain…you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven’t you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered…there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse…and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. “He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life.” We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn’t it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don’t know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore.
And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now. Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now?
I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach.
You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? You are a man, a retired railroad worker who makes replicas as a hobby. You decide to make a replica of one tree, the longleaf pine your great-grandfather planted- just a replica- it doesn’t have to work. How are you going to do it? How long do you think you might live, how good is your glue? For one thing, you are going to have to dig a hole and stick your replica trunk halfway to China if you want the thing to stand up. Because you will have to work fairly big; if your replica is too small, you’ll be unable to handle the slender, three-sided needles, affix them in clusters of three in fascicles, and attach those laden fascicles to flexible twigs. The twigs themselves must be covered by “many silvery-white, fringed, long-spreading scales.” Are your pine cones’ scales “thin, flat, rounded at the apex?” When you loose the lashed copper wire trussing the limbs to the trunk, the whole tree collapses like an umbrella. You are a sculptor. You climb a great ladder; you pour grease all over a growing longleaf pine. Next, you build a hollow cylinder around the entire pine…and pour wet plaster over and inside the pine. Now open the walls, split the plaster, saw down the tree, remove it, discard, and your intricate sculpture is ready: this is the shape of part of the air. You are a chloroplast moving in water heaved one hundred feet above ground. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in a ring around magnesium…you are evolution; you have only begun to make trees. You are god- are you tired? Finished?
Shadow is the blue patch where the light doesn’t hit. It is mystery itself, and mystery is the ancients’ ultima Thule, the modern explorer’s Point of Relative Inaccessibility, that boreal point most distant from all known lands. There the twin oceans of beauty and horror meet. The great glaciers are calving. Ice that sifted to earth as snow in the time of Christ shears from the pack with a roar and crumbles to water. It could be that our instruments have not looked deeply enough. The RNA deep in the mantis’s jaw is a beautiful ribbon. Did the crawling Polyphemus moth have in its watery heart one cell, and in that cell one special molecule, and that molecule one hydrogen atom, and round that atom’s nucleus one wild, distant electron that split showed a forest, swaying?
I was in no tent under leaves, sleepless and glad. There was no moon at all; along the world’s coasts the sea tides would be springing strong. The air itself also has lunar tides; I lay still. Could I feel in the air an invisible sweep and surge, and an answering knock in the lungs? Or could I feel the starlight? Every minute on a square mile of this land one ten thousandth of an ounce of starlight spatters to earth. What percentage of an ounce did that make on my eyes and cheeks and arms, tapping and nudging as particles, pulsing and stroking as waves?
It looked as though the leaves of the autumn forest had taken flight, and were pouring down the valley like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, all the leaves of the hardwoods from here to Hudson’s Bay. It was as if the season’s colors were draining away like lifeblood, as if the year were molting and shedding. The year was rolling down, and a vital curve had been reached, the tilt that gives way to headlong rush. And when the monarch butterflies had passed and were gone, the skies were vacant, the air poised. The dark night into which the year was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening, a new and necessary austerity, the sparer climate for which I longed. The shed trees were brittle and still, the creek light and cold, and my spirit holding its breath.
Those people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips have the wrong idea. They should train their cameras instead on the melting of pack ice, the green filling of ponds, the tidal swings…They should film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them. They should film the invasion of the southernmost Canadian tundra by the northernmost spruce-fir forest, which is happening right now at the rate of a mile every 10 years. When the last ice sheet receded from the North American continent, the earth rebounded 10 feet. Wouldn’t that have been a sight to see?
Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.”The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.
Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.
Were the earth as smooth as a ball bearing, it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are. But here we live and move; we wander up and down the banks of the creek, we ride a railway through the Alps, and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture and lapse into dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle… What I want to do, then, is add time to the texture, paint the landscape on an unrolling scroll, and set the giant relief globe spinning on it stand.
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery. The surface of mystery is not smooth, any more than the planet is smooth; not even a single hydrogen atom is smooth, let alone a pine. Nor does it fit together; not even the chlorophyll and hemoglobin molecules are a perfect match, for, even after the atom of iron replaces the magnesium, long streamers of disparate atoms trail disjointedly from the rims of the molecule’s loops. Freedom cuts both ways. Mystery itself is as fringed and intricate at the shape of the air at times. Forays into mystery cut bays and fine fjords, but the forested mainland itself is implacable both in its bulk and in its most filigreed fringe of detail.
I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems. So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one…The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.
The aim is to love God because the pure heart loves loving God and because the true mind knows He deserves it. Unlike the accusations and beliefs of the critics and skeptics, it is neither an obligation of duty; nor a fear of damnation; nor a wish for power; nor a desire to appear more righteous than others; nor because God needs it; but because through all love, truth, reason, faith, honesty, and joy in and beyond oneself and the universe, He is worthy.
I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments.
When I pray - I mean really pray - for people and situations throughout the day, I'm a much humbler person and more sensitive to the lives of the people around me. I am not the master of my fate and captain of my soul. I've tried that, and it makes me more of a task master and a jerk. Prayer puts things in God's hands, and I like the Creator's power more than my own.
Refusal to engage in spiritual warfare does not exempt you from being among the next casualties of war
The grace of endurance is the great power of God at work within us.
Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.
The love that I believe in is something that goes beyond the physical aspects of this world. The love that I believe is one that extends its energy and power through the beautiful souls that I encounter along the way, a love that can be seen in the eyes of a little dog or in the confusion of a cute lost cat who wants to be worshiped like a Goddess. This kind of love goes through a divine crafting of a person's inner self, through personal experience and thousands of years of tears and strength, that can only be seen in the familiar eyes of old souls, the eyes that recognize each other even after long times of separation, the eyes that find themselves familiar with places they have probably been to before, but that nevertheless bring great memories with every visit. This kind of love sees hope in the eyes of new-born children that know way much more than they are capable of putting into words and that bring with their innocence a smile on each person's face who'd wish they could start again. The love that I see when I look at you is a love which has roots deep inside each of us, but that needs care and light to grow and unfold its branches so that they can reach outside of ourselves and even further beyond the skies.
...There are also those who inadvertently grant power to another man's words by continuously trying to spite him. If a man gets to the point where he can simply say, 'The sky is blue,' and people indignantly rush up trying to refute him saying, 'No, the sky is light blue,' then, whether they realize it or not, he has become an authority figure even to such adversaries.
Real men don't dance to other people's tune, instead, they play for others to dance.
Lately, however, I have changed my thinking on this. I have a new Greek mythological figure in mind for the CIO; Cassandra. Cassandra made the critical relationship-building error of spitting on Apollo. As retaliation, Apollo gave Cassandra the power of prophecy, but also the curse of never being believed. (Cassandra eventually goes insane, by the way, so you all have that to look forward to.)
A true revolution is about making those who are comfortable with corruption, uncomfortable. It's about pointing your fingers in the right direction and with nothing but the truth, will come power. A power not to exploit the Liberian people. But an ability to restore liberty, justice, and prosperity for all." - Henry Johnson Jr
The quickest way a person can defame your character is by taking something you said out of context. But Fear Not. Everyone that was ever Anyone always had their words taken out of context. If you can't handle having your words twisted up, then leadership is not for you. Leadership is reserved for the #BRAVE.
A strange feeling: as if filaments trailed from Arin's body. A thousand fishing lines snagging attention. Here and there. Little tugs. People caught on the lines. The way sometimes people couldn't look him in the eye, and when they did they become fish trying to breath air. He wished it weren't like that.He knew it would be necessary.
Every time we decide to use our power to influence others, particularly if we`re gleeful and hasty, we damage the relationship. We move from enjoying a healthy partnership based on trust and mutual respect to establishing a police state that requires constant monitoring.
Mastering the art of seduction gives one a great power, and like any power, it's to be wielded with responsibility; a man who wields the art of seduction without a sense of responsibility and restraint is a walking proximity bomb of viral epidemics, needless procreation, heartbroken families, and shattered dreams.
People are not alone in making art. Even the smallest animals can create things of beauty. Even the smallest animals have power and can help set things right in the world. Beautiful things are being made all the time and can still work great wonders. A tiny web of silk, a small jar of earth, can hold a glowing ember of the sun to help light the world.
Echo of the waves appears in the sky, their lights reflected in your eyes. I'm back in our world and happy again. The sound of your voice, compassionate embrace... The power in your touch, serenity of stride... The beating of your heart calms down my presence, gracing with eternal peace of mind... Bathing in the sunshine of your arms I'm deeply aware of the melodic stream that has no language...gliding beneath the quiet Heaven of your eyes...
That which is external, it is instrumental (naimitik); it is relative and it is perishable [destructive]. Instrumental means no one has a say in it. One’s actions are not of his own free will; he is under the control of external power. So on what basis do you need to object? Sooner or later you will have to become free from objections.
I am not a victim of circumstance, situation, nor any external condition of life. I am an active participant in the creation of my reality, meaning, I am actively participating in the creation of what I think, what I feel, what I spend my time on, who I spend my time with, what I consume mentally and physically, and all the blessings and contrastive experiences that come my way. Every effect has a cause and every cause has an effect, all of which include me because it is my life to live, my life to use, and my life to enjoy.
Isn’t it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment? We say, “Well, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____.” Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I – or anyone else – decide to give in to “rational excuses” that justify feeling bad – it’s interesting that only further suffering is the result. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights… and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn… yet if we’re aware of what we are doing and we’re ready to let go of the suffering – then why go there at all? It’s like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that… so why do we keep repeating it? Pain is going to happen; it’s inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day… and the next day… into next week… maybe next month… and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves! Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go! Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to “go there.” The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It’s only fair! It’s never my fault; it’s always someone else’s. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it. I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever “go there” again. It’s my choice; it’s your choice. So it’s about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it’s time to stop acting like we don’t. It’s time to relinquish the excuses.
Your call to power is to slow down and reflect within. Gather the peace within yourself before you go out and act among the world. The feel good feeling that lasts is only achieved when you yourself know peace. Nothing is more powerful. This is why you have the highs and lows, the mood swings, the transcendent ecstasy followed by the crash. It is because you have yet to develop a foundation of peace for yourself that acts as an unmovable anchor in your life. Establish this peace in your life and you will experience a whole new reality of the world that flows with you in every way possible, rather than against you.
It's not a silly pursuit to read beyond what's handed to you, to seek out new voices and leap over the usual books everyone's already talking about and see what you can find on your own.Making definitive choices about what we spend our time on as readers can make a statement, a difference. We can lift other writers up, give space and attention to more voices than the ones that already have all the space and attention.There is power in what we choose to consume as readers, and there is power in what we choose to amplify, celebrate, and share.
The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
...I say to you, without pleasure, that this son of ours will be a great man, because -- well -- because he is not very intelligent. He can see only one desire at a time. I said he tested his dreams; he will murder every dream with the implacable arrows of his will. This boy will win to every goal of his aiming; for he can realize no thought, no reason, but his own. And I am sorry for his coming greatness...
I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldn’t let me. Some deep wrestling match going on inside my rib house and gray matter. Some woman in me I’d never met. You know who she was? My intellect. When I opened the door and there she stood, with her sassy red reading glasses and fitted skirt and leather bookbag, I thought, who the hell are you? Crouching into a defensive posture and looking at her warily out of the corner of my eye. Watch out, woman. To which she replied, I’m Lidia. I have a desire toward language and knowledge that will blow your mind.
Love sharpens intelligence, fear dulls it. Who wants you to be intelligent? Not those who are in power. How can they want you to be intelligent?—because if you are intelligent you will start seeing the whole strategy, their games. They want you to be stupid and mediocre. They certainly want you to be efficient as far as work is concerned, but not intelligent; hence humanity lives at the lowest, at the minimum of its potential.
Acquiring knowledge doesn't bring power into your life, until you apply what you have learned.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.
History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.
But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
The motor car with its blinds drawn and an air of inscrutable reserve proceeded towards Piccadilly, still gazed at, still ruffling the faces on both sides of the street with the same dark breath of veneration whether for Queen, Prince, or Prime Minister nobody knew. The face itself had been seen only once by three people for a few seconds. Even the sex was now in dispute. But there could be no doubt that greatness was seated within; greatness was passing, hidden, down Bond Street, removed only by a hand's-breadth from ordinary people who might now, for the first and only time, be within speaking distance of the majesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state which will be known to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth. The face in the motor car will then be known.
I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me become a Communist, but what had attracted me to the movement more than anything, dazzled me, was the feeling (real or apparent) of standing near the wheel of history. For in those days we actually did decide the fate of men and events, especially at the universities; in those early years there were very few Communists on the faculty, and the Communists in the student body ran the universities almost single-handed, making decisions on academic staffing, teaching reform, and the curriculum. The intoxication we experienced is commonly known as the intoxication of power, but (with a bit of good will) I could choose less severe words: we were bewitched by history; we were drunk with the thought of jumping on its back and feeling it beneath us; admittedly, in most cases the result was an ugly lust for power, but (as all human affairs are ambiguous) there was still (and especially, perhaps, in us, the young), an altogether idealistic illusion that we were inaugurating a human era in which man (all men) would be neither outside history, nor under the heel of history, but would create and direct it.
And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.
The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.
If one looks at modern society, it is obvious that in order to live, the great majority of people are forced to sell their labour power. All the physical and intellectual capacities existing in human beings, in their personalities, which must be set in motion to produce useful things, can only be used if they are sold in exchange for wages. Labour power is usually perceived as a commodity bought and sold nearly like all others. The existence of exchange and wage-labour seems normal, inevitable. Yet the introduction of wage-labour involved conflict, resistance, and bloodshed. The separation of the worker from the means of production, now an accepted fact of life, took a long time and was accomplished by force.In England, in the Netherlands, in France, from the sixteenth century on, economic and political violence expropriated craftsmen and peasants, repressed indigence and vagrancy, imposed wage-labour on the poor. Between 1930 and 1950, Russia decreed a labour code which included capital punishment in order to organise the transition of millions of peasants to industrial wage-labour in less than a few decades. Seemingly normal facts: that an individual has nothing but his labour power, that he must sell it to a business unit to be able to live, that everything is a commodity, that social relations revolve around market exchange… such facts now taken for granted result from a long, brutal process.By means of its school system and its ideological and political life, contemporary society hides the past and present violence on which this situation rests. It conceals both its origin and the mechanism which enables it to function. Everything appears as a free contract in which the individual, as a seller of labour power, encounters the factory, the shop or the office. The existence of the commodity seems to be an obvious and natural phenomenon, and the periodic major and minor disasters it causes are often regarded as quasi-natural calamities. Goods are destroyed to maintain their prices, existing capacities are left to rot, while elementary needs remain unfulfilled. Yet the main thing that the system hides is not the existence of exploitation or class (that is not too hard to see), nor its horrors (modern society is quite good at turning them into media show). It is not even that the wage labour/capital relationship causes unrest and rebellion (that also is fairly plain to see). The main thing it conceals is that insubordination and revolt could be large and deep enough to do away with this relationship and make another world possible.
In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.
We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both.
[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.
In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.
Whenever a person or agency has substantially more power than others, their behaviour are not democratic. and if in any circumstances their acts are not supervised then Power is always misused by certain people.Humanity is most important state and that is missing throughout world.
The essence of the Revolution is to abolish the attainment of unqualified power of man over man either by vote-getting, money-pressure or crude terror. The Revolution repudiates profit or terror altogether as methods of human intercourse. It turns the attention of men and women back from a frantic and futile struggle for the means of power, a struggle against our primary social instincts, to an innate urgency to make and to a beneficial competition for preeminence in social service. It recalls man to a clean and creative life from the entanglements and perversion of secondary issues into which he has fallen. It replaces property and official authority by the compelling prestige of sound achievement. Eminent service remains the only source of influence left in the world . . .
And suddenly he became almost lyric. "For three thousand years the Common Man has been fended off from the full and glorious life he might have had, by Make Believe. For three thousand years in one form or another he has been asking for an unrestricted share in the universal welfare. He has been asking for a fair dividend from civilisation. For all that time, and still it goes on, the advantaged people, the satisfied people, the kings and priests, the owners and traders, the gentlefolk and the leaders he trusted, have been cheating him tacitly or deliberately, out of his proper share and contribution in the common life. Sometimes almost consciously, sometimes subconsciously, cheating themselves about it as well. When he called upon God, they said 'We'll take care of your God for you', and they gave him organised religion. When he calls for Justice, they say 'Everything decently and in order', and give him a nice expensive Law Court beyond his means. When he calls for order and safety too loudly they hit him on the head with a policeman's truncheon. When he sought knowledge, they told him what was good for him. And to protect him from the foreigner, so they said, they got him bombed to hell, trained him to disembowel his fellow common men with bayonets and learn what love of King and Country really means."All with the best intentions in the world, mind you."Most of these people, I tell you, have acted in perfect good faith. They manage to believe that in sustaining this idiot's muddle they are doingtremendous things -- stupendous things -- for the Common Man. They can live lives of quiet pride and die quite edifyingly in an undernourished, sweated, driven and frustrated world. Useful public servants! Righteous self-applause! Read their bloody biographies!
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.It has been objected, that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work.
I was a king for a while. I wasn't a very good one. I wanted all kinds of things. I wanted, well, you know. Power. Glory. To be feared. All that good stuff. But you know what? When the gaiaphage did it to me, when she made me cry and grovel and beg for mercy, I realized: There's no end to this for me. There's no end to the FAYZ. If we get out alive, there's still no end. And what happens to me out there in the world?" "No, you're wrong they can't blame you for everything that happened." He laughed. "Yeah, well, actually, they can. A king, warrior, whatever I was, I want to go out in a blaze of glory. I've risen as high as I'm ever going to. And if I survive, I'm just going to end up as prisoner number three-one-two-whatever. You coming to see me on visiting days." "But I will come see you. And I will wait for you." "No," he said firmly. "I get my big finish. And you get your life. Move on, Diana.
You didn't make me responsible. You don't have that power. This"—he held up his hands, and light glowed from his palms—"this made me responsible. Having power made me responsible. I had the power and you had the brains. So we were chosen. That's the way it works, isn't it? People who can have to help those who can't. The strong defend the weak from the strong. I don't think you invented that, Astrid; all you did was make me see it. Well, I see it. There it is. The FAYZ gave me this light, and the FAYZ made it necessary. And now the light isn't helping, is it? Now that monster is going to walk into town and kill people I care about and people I love.
You didn't make me responsible. You don't have that power. This"—he held up his hands, and light glowed from his palms—"this made me responsible. Having power made me responsible. I had the power and you had the brains. So we were chosen. That's the way it works, isn't it? People who can have to help those who can't. The strong defend the weak from the strong. I don't think you invented that, Astrid; all you did was make me see it. Well, I see it. There it is. The FAYZ gave me this light, and the FAYZ made it necessary. And now the light isn't helping, is it? Now that monster is going to walk into town and kill people I care about and people I love. (Chapter Twenty-Six | 2 Hours, 56 Minutes)
For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each agent working in collusion and antagonism - like the cold and the sun alike creating a deadly spear of ice... Who is in thrall to whom? And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.
Traditionally we associate power with the display of strength, winning, and having lots of money and prestige. I think we have power mixed up with the domination of others. It's time to redefine power. To have inner peace and spread that peace throughout the world, THAT is power.
Living in peace has transformative power!
I ran then, following the power, ran with joy and a wild, winging certainty, right into the hearth of everything I loved.And there was no earth, no cold, no dust, nor stones nor water rushing past; but only this joy, this singing, awesome flight straight into the soul of God.Into fire.
Believe God for something today. Prayer is the key to connecting with God and allowing Him to speak to your spirit. Open your heart and free your mind.
Words have power, and when you speak you give them life. Speak into the atmosphere. Speak into existence what you believe, desire, dream, and hope.
There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.
You speak rather poorly of God when praising Him, or when wanting to praise Him, only during that which you perceive to be your highest of moments. That is many a reason behind unbelief altogether: the failed attempt to control God, to lower His standards to one's own level of understanding in doubt of His foresight and omniscience, His goodness and power. He wants to know if you are faithful enough to praise Him even when, to you, all seems lost.
I do not care about power and wealth, father. I want to marry for love.”“You want to marry for love?” The elder Valentino scoffed. “Que mierda. Marrying for love is like adding extra picante to your meal. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but your stomach will curse you for it with ulcers in the end.
I've always known that whatever marriage I made would be political. It would be about power, not love. But we might get lucky. In time, we might have both.''Or the third amplifier will turn me into a power-mad dictator and you'll have to kill me.''Yes, that would make for an awkward honeymoon.
Here I stand now, with a sweet tingling feeling all over, recalling the last time I was here, and I am glad that I am here again, while wondering why I didn’t recognize it earlier. But now I have got the chance to recognize and deal with it more effectively and I know that I can visit this place as many times as I want, and take asmany chances as I want, because I finally realize that I, am in total control of my life.
Here I stand now, with a sweet tingling feeling all over, recalling the last time I was here, and I am glad that I am here again, while wondering why I didn’t recognize it earlier. But now I have got the chance to recognize and deal with it more effectively and I know that I can visit this place as many times as I want, and take as many chances as I want, because I finally realize that I, am in total control of my life.
He didn’t know what beget what, but he quickly learned that people with money to hide were powerful, and powerful people were violent. It was reliable math: as the amount of money being conveyed increased, so too did the level of paranoia; the psychotic behavior of his clients increasing with every figure added to the sum.
Where I had felt a victim, I had become a determiner by recognizing I had choices. When considering a purchase, I stopped saying, "I can't afford it," and started saying, "That's not where I want to spend that amount of money.
That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thrombosis, something of that sort. A sort of heart in the wrong place, isn't it? Anyhow -- there it is. Everything seems obliged to go through it now; it can hold up things, stimulate things, give the world fever or pain, and yet all the same -- is it necessary, Irwell? Is it inevitable? Couldn't we function economically quite as well without it? Has the world got to carry that kind of thing for ever?"What real strength is there in a secondary system of that sort? It's secondary, it's parasitic. It's only a sort of hypertrophied, uncontrolled counting-house which has become dominant by falsifying the entries and intercepting payment. It's a growth that eats us up and rots everything like cancer. Financiers make nothing, they are not a productive department. They control nothing. They might do so, but they don't. They don't even control Westminster and Washington. They just watch things in order to make speculative anticipations. They've got minds that lie in wait like spiders, until the fly flies wrong. Then comes the debt entanglement. Which you can break, like the cobweb it is, if only you insist on playing the wasp. I ask you again what real strength has Finance if you tackle Finance? You can tax it, regulate its operations, print money over it without limit, cancel its claims. You can make moratoriums and jubilees. The little chaps will dodge and cheat and run about, but they won't fight. It is an artificial system upheld by the law and those who make the laws. It's an aristocracy of pickpocket area-sneaks. The Money Power isn't a Power. It's respectable as long as you respect it, and not a moment longer. If it struggles you can strangle it if you have the grip...You and I worked that out long ago, Chiffan..."When we're through with our revolution, there will be no money in the world but pay. Obviously. We'll pay the young to learn, the grown-ups to function, everybody for holidays, and the old to make remarks, and we'll have a deuce of a lot to pay them with. We'll own every real thing; we, the common men. We'll have the whole of the human output in the market. Earn what you will and buy what you like, we'll say, but don't try to use money to get power over your fellow-creatures. No squeeze. The better the economic machine, the less finance it will need. Profit and interest are nasty ideas, artificial ideas, perversions, all mixed up with betting and playing games for money. We'll clean all that up...""It's been going on a long time," said Irwell."All the more reason for a change," said Rud.
Money is not respect. Neither is power. And if people respect you for your money or your power, it isn't you they respect - but the money or the power.When you win people over who hate you for what you are or what you believe, and they still come to you to make friends - or to ask you for counsel or assistance - that is respect - and that respect is power.
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended. When each individual realises for himself that this thing primarily stands for and should only be accepted as a moral due - that it should be paid out as honestly stored energy, and not as a usurped privilege - many of our social, religious, and political troubles will have permanently passed. As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: 'Money: something everybody else has and I must get,' would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly. Some of it she now held in her hand - two soft, green ten-dollar bills - and she felt that she was immensely better off for the having of them. It was something that was power in itself. One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value. Even then she would have had no conception of the relative value of the thing; her one thought would, undoubtedly, have concerned the pity of having so much power and the inability to use it.
At what point in your life do you say I have had enough... money, food, clothes, these possessions that we keep killing one another for even power and dominance? One advice, look at your age and declare that my age dictates I start doing this thing, I should stop doing this and that, I should say this and not that... in essence grow your brain to reason. Just like that.
The thought system which dominates our culture is laced with selfish values, and relinquishing those values is a lot easier said than done. The journey to a pure heart can be highly disorienting. For years, we may have worked for power, money or prestige. Now all of a sudden we've learned that these are just the values of a dying world.
If you want to fight hell and the power of darkness that seek to destroy the hearts of our daughters, I know a type of spiritual warfare that creates value in a daughter's spirit. It is called "Taking your Daughter out for tea" or "Going to Her Soccer Game", and it works in direct opposition to the agenda of hell and darkness that wants to destroy their lives.
Colour outside the lines, live outside the box. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, or not. Don’t be afraid, listen to your heart. Heaven is a state of being – of one-ness, and Hell is a state of being – lost. We simply need to live as we best define ourselves, find our own ways of being who we are in our world. There is no requirement - only freedom of choice. We should not be judged if we are doing what we think best according to our perceptions at any given time. Guilt should be discarded, moved beyond - what matters is who we choose to be in the next moment, given what we might have learned. We continually create ourselves anew. Forgiving someone is a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto far too long. Take back the energy you have wasted on these things and reclaim your power to be your next best self. Honour the past but refresh, expand, renew, fulfill. Heaven is within us, always reachable.
England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
In listening lies great power.Many are expert in speaking (while everyone hears), adept in analyzing in bits and pieces, very prompt in commenting, and always ready to stamp judgement of 'right' or 'wrong'.Very few are skilled in listening, first, with the ears and, then, with the heart. Those who do hold true, sustainable, and great power.
We spend so much time trying to change others – in part – because we do not deeply believe in and embrace ourselves as we already are. And so more often than not we do not learn to trust and utilize our gifts and power whole-heartedly enough to pursue and fulfill our own passions, purpose and possibilities.
We are often given pills or fluids to help remedy illness, yet little has been taught to us about the power of smell to do the exact same thing. It is known that the scent of fresh rosemary increases memory, but this cure for memory loss is not divulged by doctors to help the elderly. I also know that the most effective use of the blue lotus flower is not from its dilution with wine or tea – but from its scent. To really maximize the positive effects of the blue lily (or the pink lotus), it must be sniffed within minutes of plucking. This is why it is frequently shown being sniffed by my ancient ancestors on the walls of temples and on papyrus. Even countries across the Orient share the same imagery. The sacred lotus not only creates a relaxing sensation of euphoria, and increases vibrations of the heart, but also triggers genetic memory - and good memory with an awakened heart ushers wisdom.
Always being truthful gives you a certain kind of freedom. It springs forth like a fountain splashing throughout your body until it floods your soul. To be honest and to be trustworthy are great attributes. Ah, the power, Ah, the freedom
Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? This sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that every word, every act of our Art is said and is done either for good, or for evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!
The authorities don't grant concessions out of the kindness of their hearts; they simply concede the reality of what their subjects are strong enough to compel from them. If you want political leverage, don't beg for it, don't seek it through their channels - take power outside them.
I think the measure of advancement depends on where you are stood and from what distance you look. A thousand years ago, we farmed the fields, built towns and defended our land with swords and spears. It is little different now, save for the number of people we have to protect. We still kill with a sharp edge or point of metal, blood runs red still, sons ride off to war and parents grieve. If you look at the Empire in its whole, then it is peaceful. If you look closely, you will see the small wars, the bandits and rebellions. Look more closely still and you’ll see the petty crimes, the struggle to survive, the rich bleeding the poor. Even the soil can turn against its farmers, yielding few crops. Or the weather, a late frost killing the early crops. There is strife and conflict everywhere in the Empire. Everywhere you find men, you find conflict.
...Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul. Power’s comings and goings, from host to host, via war, marriage, ballet box, diktat, and accident of birth, are the plot of history. The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.” Immaculée Constantin now looks up at me. “Power will notice you. Power is watching you now. Carry on as you are, and power will favor you. But power will also laugh at you, mercilessly, as you lie dying in a private clinic, a few fleeting decades from now. Power mocks all its illustrious favorites as they lie dying…
Depression, which lives below the horizon, is the result of painting and entertaining negative imagery - most of which has not taken place in reality. Get up, move, and appreciate that which is given. What is lacking is usually material and heavily influenced by external forces. Don't play yourself, save yourself.
To love, to live, to feel so much that your world keeps spinning, faster and faster, in that wonderful, chaotic mess of humanity that you’d so hastily give up. Immortality is overrated. It is nothing but the ability to live through it all and not experience a single thing, to eat everything without tasting it at all." Isak’s eyes shone with a desperate need. He wanted, more than anything it seemed, to be like me, when all I wanted was to be like him.
The gospel is the announcement that God has fulfilled the promise of Scriptures to make the world right in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1-11). Christ has died for our sins. By his death and resurrection (and ascension), he has defeated the effects of our sins, including death itself. He now sits at the right hand of the Father ruling over the world. In Christ the new creation has begun. Old things are passing away. Behold, the new has begun (2 Cor 5:17). All who respond to this good news repent of the old ways, and make Jesus their Lord and Savior, enter in and become part of what God is doing to reconcile the whole world to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19), and receive power to become the children of God (Jn 1:12). This in one paragraph is the gospel.
God’s grace is strong enough to hold me steady through every difficulty.
Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.It was his birthright.
When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.
Bond is stronger than blood. The family grows stronger by bond.
They had learned that Sorhatani expected the same sort of instant obedience as her husband. She had grown up around men of power and had married into the great khan’s family at a very young age. She knew that men prefer to follow, that it takes an effort of will to lead. She had that will.
Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.
John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.
He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it
No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?
It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?
The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.
Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.
The only power which can illuminate you is your own mind! No other mind can lighten you if your mind insists to remain in the darkness! The fate of your fate is within you!
The deepness of your mind produces the thickness of your thoughts.
Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity--precisely the time whenyou need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for ii -- to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it.
Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity,precisely the time whenyou need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for it, to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it.
In my isolation, I dreamt of power. My daydreams and fantasies were all about how I could win, how I could be number one, how I could have my cake and eat it too. When those dreams were fulfilled, I felt nothing. The love-sized hole within me grew larger and larger as I died by my own hand, by my own mind. During my transformation, I found what I needed to fill the hole. I found peace, joy, and connection. To power, I waved goodbye. I thought that being a loving, spiritual being meant sacrificing that triumph-hungry drive within. For much too long, I ignored these urges, believing them to be the opposite of love while I cycled in and out of love awareness. The day that my love mindset became a permanent state of mind was the day I realized that love is not the opposite of power. Love is power. Love is the strongest power there is.
Disappointment over love affairs generally has the effect of driving men to drink, and women to ruin; and this, because most people never learn the art of transmuting their strongest emotions into dreams of a constructive nature.
As he once wrote of Kipling, his own enduring influence can be measured by a number of terms and phrases—doublethink, thought police, 'Some animals are more equal than others'—that he embedded in our language and in our minds. In Orwell's own mind there was an inextricable connection between language and truth, a conviction that by using plain and unambiguous words one could forbid oneself the comfort of certain falsehoods and delusions. Every time you hear a piece of psychobabble or propaganda—'people's princess,' say, or 'collateral damage,' or 'peace initiative'—it is good to have a well-thumbed collection of his essays nearby. His main enemy in discourse was euphemism, just as his main enemy in practice was the abuse of power, and (more important) the slavish willingness of people to submit to it.
There is beauty all around us, and the light finds us when we realize, we are all part of that beauty and worth the cherishing. If we despise any, we journey to despise ourselves. See all as beautiful, even if they choose to see themselves through you, as being less than so. We have the power to see for each, and be the reflection of what they may yet see.
Possession is not only when the devil plays hide and seek in your brain or poison your medula oblongata with negativity, but it is also when you are under the influence of the same specie as you!
If you can be heartless as the first man who visited the space, then there will be nothing impossibe for you to achieve.
Don't live by your thoughts only; live by your words also. Whatever plans you think about, affirm it in your mouth first, declare it and you will succeed in working it out! Words can be powerful!
How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.
If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?
The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science 'more geometrico.
When others seem to take advantage of you, do not retaliate by trying to take advantage of them. Use your power in improving yourself, so that you can do better and better work. That is how you are going to win in the race. Later on, those who tried to take advantage of you will be left in the rear. Remember, those who are dealing unjustly with you or with anybody are misusing their mind. They are therefore losing their power, and will, in the course of time, begin to lose ground; but if you, in the mean time, are turning the full power of your mind to good account, you will not only gain more power, but you will soon begin to gain ground. You will gain and continue to gain in the long run, while others who have been misusing their minds will lose mostly everything in the long run. That is how you are going to win, and win splendidly regardless of ill treatment or opposition.
A positive mind is like a powerful stream of water that is gathering volume and force from hundreds of tributaries all along its course. The further on it goes the greater its power, until when it reaches its goal, that power is simply immense. A negative mind, however, would be something like a stream, that the further it flows the more divisions it makes, until, when it reaches its goal, instead of being one powerful stream, it has become a hundred, small, weak, shallow streams.
The more you think of what is right, the more you tend to make every action in your mind right. The more you think of the goal you have in view, the more life and power you will call into action in working for that goal. The more you think of your ambition, the more power you will give to those faculties that can make your ambitions come true. The more you think of harmony, of health, of success, of happiness, of things that are desirable, of things that are beautiful, of things that have true worth, the more the mind will tend to build all those things in yourself, provided, of course, that all such thinking is subjective.
Think only of what you desire, and expect only what you desire, even when the very contrary seems to be coming into your life. Make it a point to have definite results in mind at all times. Permit no thinking to be aimless. Every aimless thought is time and energy wasted, while every thought that is inspired with a definite aim will help to realize that aim, and if all your thoughts are inspired with a definite aim, the whole power of your mind will be for you and will work with you in realizing what you have in view. That you should succeed is therefore assured, because there is enough power in your mind to realize your ambitions, provided all of that power is used in working for your ambitions.
Do not turn the power of your mind upon others, but turn it upon yourself in such a way that it will make you stronger, more positive, more capable, and more efficient, and as you develop in this manner, success must come of itself. There is only one way by which you can influence others legitimately, and that is through the giving of instruction, but in that case, there is no desire to influence. You desire simply to impart knowledge and information, and you exercise a most desirable influence without desiring to do so.
When you see evil do not form ideas that are in the likeness of that evil; do not think of the evil as bad, but try to understand the forces that are back of that evil—forces that are good in themselves, though misdirected in their present state. By trying to understand the nature of the power that is back of evil or adversity, you will not form bad ideas, and therefore will feel no bad effects from experiences that may seem undesirable. At the same time, you will think your own thought about the experiences, thereby developing the power of the master mind.
The average person is in the habit of saying, “The older I get;”’ and he thereby calls the attention of his mind to the idea that he is getting older. In brief, he compels his mind to believe that he is getting older and older, and thereby directs the mind to produce more and more age. The true expression in this connection is, “The longer I live.” This expression calls the mind’s attention to the length of life, which will, in turn, tend to increase the power of that process in you that can prolong life. When people reach the age of sixty or seventy, they usually speak of “the rest of my days,” thus implying the idea that there are only a few more days remaining. The mind is thereby directed to finish life in a short period of time, and accordingly, all the forces of the mind will proceed to work for the speedy termination of personal existence. The correct expression is “from now on,” as, that leads thought into the future indefinitely without impressing the mind with any end whatever.
And so the mind or spirit is the great opportunist, itself impossible to pin down, take hold of, anywhere; one is tempted to believe that of all its influence nothing is left but decay. Every advance is a gain in particular and a separation in general; it is an increase in power leading only to a progressive increase in impotence, but there is no way to quit.
You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.
These bits of paper are covered with lies. They poison your minds. And so long as they exist, you cannot hope to see the world as it truly is.(...)You turn to them for answers and salvation. (...) You rely more upon them than upon yourselves. This makes you weak and stupid. You trust in words. Drops of ink. Do you ever stop to think of who put them there? Or why? No. You simply accept their words without question. And what if those words speak falsely, as they often do? This is dangerous.
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?Two things result from this fact.I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.
I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.
You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care about and really want to protect. Would you let someone take advantage of that person? Would you let someone use that person you really care about? Or would you speak up for them? If it was someone else you care about, you'd say something. I know you would. Okay, now put yourself back in that body. That person is you. Stand up and tell 'em, "Enough!
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.
I can give her no greater power than she has already, said the woman; don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.
We Lannisters do have a certain pride," said Tyrion Lannister.“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry. “Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.
Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn't make me do — you could put me through hell if you demanded them and I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It's so simple. Of course you do. All of me that can be owned. You'll never demand anything else. But you want to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it?" The words did not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know them to be true, and still remain controlled and controlling — as she wanted him to remain.
Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.
I have done this—made the sad prince laugh. Made his grieving parents smile. None but me. Think you only kings have power? Stand on a stage and hold the hearts of men in your hands. Make them laugh with a gesture, cry with a word. Make them love you. And you will know what power is.
At that moment, Harry fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye moody was more terrible than Harry could have ever imagined. There was no benign smile upon Dumbledore's face, no twinkle in the eyes behind the spectacles. There was cold fury in every line of the ancient face; a sense of power radiated from Dumbledore as though he were giving off burning heat.
Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light. A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained. The darkness paused for breath. They erupted.
There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.
Of course, it was impossible, in this company, not to think about balances of power. Raffin and Bann glanced at each other now and then, sharing silent agreement, teasing each other, or just resting their eyes on each other, as if each man was a comfortable resting place for the other. Prince Raffin, heir to the Middluns throne; Bann, who had no title, no fortune. How she longed to ask them questions that were too nosy for asking, even by her standards. How did they balance money matters? How did they make decisions? How did Bann cope with the expectation that Raffin marry and produce heirs? If Randa knew the truth about his son, would Bann be in danger? Did Bann ever resent Raffin’s wealth and importance? What was the balance of power in their bed?
Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.
Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.
Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.
And Gandalf said: "This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what must be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the time comes of the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart.
In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.
He was demanding. He always would be. But sometimes, he was so vulnerable and she realized she had power in the relationship as well. She hadn’t expected that. He was as vulnerable to her as she was to him. He just acted arrogant and bossy, but deep down, where it counted, he didn’t want to lose her either.
Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.
Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
I value my ownindependence so highly that I can fancy no degradation greater than thatof having another man perpetually directing and advising and lecturingme, or even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He mightbe the wisest of men, or the most powerful--I should equally rebel andresent his interference...
One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!
But… all I said was that I was scared." After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind." She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons." You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later." She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power." I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…" Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself.
Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.
But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning.
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.
Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. From its ether of manifestation that is garlanded in perpetual darkness, it not only influences and seeks the ruination and destruction of everything that resides in our universe, but rushes to embrace its own oblivion as well.To accomplish this, however, it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain. For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate. This then becomes the condition of evil’s existence: the baneful ideologies of those who wantonly chose to ignore the needs and rights of others, inducing oppression, fear, pain, and even death throughout the cosmos. And by these means, evil seeks to supplant the balance of the universe with its perverse nature. And once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself. And within that terrible instant of unimaginable exploding quantum fury, it will burn brighter than a trillion galaxies to herald its moment of ultimate triumph. But a moment is all that it shall be. And a micro-second later when the last amber burns and flickers out to the demise of dissolving ash, evil will leave its legacy of a totally devoid universe as its everlasting monument to eternal death.
And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped...
In this lifetime we are like Superman who must remain disguised as the nerdy newspaper journalist Clark Kent, or Harry Potter and his friends who are not allowed to do magic while they are on holiday, away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... but even Harry Potter and Clark Kent get to tap into their ‘special powers’ once in a while, especially when the going gets tough.
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
My power grew angry that it was confined to my petite frame and pulled against my taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through my skin to lay flat against my outer edge. The glowing energy began to solidify against my flesh; it lengthened to mold itself to my frame and contained me in a transparent cocoon. I flexed my fingers against the waxy surface and began to panic. I was cut off from my coven now and could not feel their thoughts. I could see the panic on their faces as I fell onto my side to convulse.
She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.
THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.
And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop.
Kelsier smiled. 'It means that you, Vin, are a very special person. You have a power that most high noblemen envy. It is a power that, had you been born an aristocrat, would have made you one of the most deadly and influential people in all of the final empire.'Kelsier leaned forward again. 'But, you weren't born an aristocrat. You're not noble, Vin. You don't have to play by their rules--and that makes you even more powerful.
Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.
How can the strength of one man stand against Jake and an army of demons?""He can," I countered, "if he has the power of Heaven on his side. After all, Christ was a man.""He was also the Son of God, there's a difference.""Do you think they could have crucified him if he wasn't human?" I asked. "He was flesh and blood, just like Xavier. You've been here so long you underestimate the power of humans. They're a force of nature.
My son used to believe that he could look at a plane in flight and make it explode in midair by simply thinking it. He believed, at thirteen, that the border between himself and the world was thin and porous enough to allow him to affect the course of events. An aircraft in flight was a provocation too strong to ignore. He’d watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he’d sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people. He was sensitive to the most incidental stimulus and he thought he could feel the object itself yearning to burst. All he had to do was wish the fiery image into his mind and the plane would ignite and shatter. His sister used to tell him, Go ahead, blow it up, let me see you take that plane out of the sky with all two hundred people aboard, and it scared him to hear someone talk this way and it scared her too because she wasn’t completely convinced he could not do it. It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent. But Jeff got older and lost interest and conviction. He lost the paradoxical gift for being separate and alone and yet intimately connected, mind-wired to distant things.
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
All empires fall, eventually.” “But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.[”]
If you never have sex you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel.And if you never have sex, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.
I keep what I know about Sarah Lynn and Lawrence to myself. I also remind myself that even if Sarah Lynn does have a scary strict father, that doesn't release her from the responsibility of treating others with respect. Abuse of power is wrong, no matter the context, no matter the history.What is "power" anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.
One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.
In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)
Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear.
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.
The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power. And if a man can act without the appearance of action, and bring about great change without the appearance of desiring it, then he has power.
Power surged through him: unfettered power, unimaginable power. It coursed through him and gave life to his maddened cry, feeding it, making it unnecesssary even to breathe. Deeper and deeper his screm became, until it was the primal voice of the very land itself. It was raw, searing. It was the energy of making and undoing, and he had unleashed it.
A waitress, bringing Finkler more hot water, interrupted Treslove's answer. Finkler always asked for more hot water no matter how much hot water had already been brought. It was his way of asserting power, Treslove thought. No doubt Nietzsche, too, ordered more hot water than he needed.
Command is a mountaintop. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius for construction, which are part of man's natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him.
And now, when Mother called to wake me up for the New Year, I first wanted to pray, but it turned into thanks, darling, for all that God had given us this year. For his wonderful ways with us, even if we don't understand it all now. For his love, that in all our disappointments and sorrow he himself helps us to bear it all, so that all this turns into a blessing because we feel his nearness and can take up our cross joyfully. And so we may know, and we do experience, that his power is made perfect in our weakness.
That public men publish falsehoodsIs nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum. They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors, This republic, Europe, Asia. Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truthHunts in no pack. You are not CatulIus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatredS. Let boys want pleasure, and menStruggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.
This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not.
Like casinos, large corporate entities have studied the numbers and the ways in which people respond to them. These are not con tricks - they're not even necessarily against our direct interests, although sometimes they can be - but they are hacks for the human mind, ways of manipulating us into particular decisions we otherwise might not make. They are also, in a way, deliberate underminings of the core principle of the free market, which derives its legitimacy from the idea that informed self-interest on aggregate sets appropriate prices for items. The key word is 'informed'; the point of behavioural economics - or rather, of its somewhat buccaneering corporate applications - is to skew our perception of the purchase to the advantage of the company. The overall consequence of that is to tilt the construction of our society away from what it should be if we were making the rational decisions classical economics imagines we would, and towards something else.
Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.
The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.
...the magic was a tool, though a natural, mysterious tool. In its awareness of the magic, his human nature had desired to connect with it, to use it. The whisperings were the voice of his own awakening, not the seductive call of a dark power. Using it was not corruption, but a natural extension of his being. And he could control the manner in which he used it. He would.
The day of democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before—it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth....
Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code -- a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people--or, rather, there aren't any right people.
We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires
In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.
Power,' as the sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda writes, 'enters the picture in two ways': the first entails constructing and legitimizing the moral system itself; the second, in enforcing it. In this view, 'deviants are those who simply do not have enough power to prevent others from defining them as such'.
So long as I perceive the world as hostile, I remain linked to it: *I am not crazy*. But sometimes, once my bad temper is exhausted, I have no language left at all: the world is not "unreal" (I could then utter it: there are arts of the unreal, among them the greatest arts of all), but disreal: reality has fled from it, is nowhere, so that I no longer have any meaning (any paradigm) available to me; *I do not manage* to define my relations with Coluche, the restaurant, the painter, the Piazza del Popolo. What relation can I have with a system of power if I am neither its slave nor its accomplice nor its witness." —from_A Lover's Discourse: Fragments_
Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away; it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline."Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it.
That seductive aroma of unchecked power was more than enough to commit genocide and mass sexual assault while unashamedly carrying their nation’s flag draped around a crucifix. People completely devoid of introspection, flaunting their entitlement and a self-importance that masked an endless pit of dejection that demanded more gold, land, and power. The Spanish crown was a plague of miserable dimensions for Chamorros.
You must never forget these three things when you have comfort: enjoy it, but with care; let it be truly relevant to lives as a true service to God; and leave noble and lasting footprints with it that will inspire, bring relief and serve as a lasting epitome of goodness to your next generation!
In everything you encounter in life you have a choice. Even if that choice is just in how you will react and move forward. The moment you become cognizant of your choices is the moment in which you also realize your own power. Choices equal power. You have the power to make things better for yourself. Even if it is just your mindset, which is actually a lot. Your perspective, your take on things, dictates your experience. Your quality of life is contingent on how you see things. Realizing that, is where the real power lies. You can make something from anything.
I'm surrounded by men substituting presence for paper and powerFemales whose foundation is filtering their flaws for fameChildren teared up by more issues than tissues to on tear upLeaders promising yester year promises whilst subjects smoke lies like crackHusbands not ashamed to break their own rib giving dogs a good run for that boneFiends disguised as friends with loyalty as strong as spaghettiFamilies turned into factories, do as you're told, cave into the mold, become like the rest pf the foldSociety nonchalant, busy growing a beard, blind to it's beastly reality
Maybe niceness is the wrong metric, I said. Of course it's really about power, Bobbi agreed. But it's harder to work out who has the power, so instead we rely on 'niceness' as a kind of stand-in. I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel 'nicer' than Palestine.
Real power isn't the ability to harm or meddle, Real power is overcoming your frailty when every sinew of your mind tells you it's impossible. Real power is facing up to your problems when you want to hid from them. Real power is picking yourself up from a fall and redoubling your efforts. Real power is the strength to choose what is right.
There was power all around, that power and that goodness, which make us come, as it were, outside our bodily selves, to share them. Over and beside us breathes the joy of hope and promise; under foot are troubles past; in the distance bowering newness tempts us ever forward. We quicken with largesse of life, and spring with vivid mystery.
There is no such thing as a world without combat, no civilization which doesn't start off by laying down the rules for relations between people. But the rules are there for the weak. The strong man experiments to find out how far they can be stretched, he creates his own rules. You would like everything to be based on the goodwill and charity of one's fellow men. But if there is no private profit to be made, there will be no progress.
His gaze, lowered toward the ground, slowly, leisurely drifts up, until it slams into mine with the heavy force of steel against steel. The green is back, emerald flames dancing behind clouds of black and grey. And with just that single look, his head slightly dipped, I know . . . Here, right now, I’m the one with all the power.
Those with unearned privileges often spin things as 'political correctness' to further silence those they wish to oppress.
In 1789 the French rebelled and found an emperor. The Americans found their freedom from the British and enslaved the Africans. The Arab Spring bloomed and the military and the jihadists seized power. The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.
When thinking is overrated And friends are easy to make, Check if it's too complicated Knowing yourself somehow... Inner peace's not hard to take, Never lost or underestimated. Get out of social media... NOW!
(about Gideon's army)Like the pitchers that held the torches, our bodies are weak and fragile, yet they hold the fire of the Holy Spirit. That fire burns in us waiting to be released so that others can see it. The light was released when the pitchers were broken. Sometimes we need to be broken to release the light in us. Our weakness allows the light of God to be seen.
Women's curiosity was given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring. In reality, the trivialization of women's curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women's insight, hunches, and intuitions. It denies all her senses. It attempts to attack her fundamental power.
oo many people are profoundly illiterate in power (TED Talk: Why ordinary people need to understand power). As a result, it’s become ever easier for those who do understand how power operates in civic life to wield a disproportionate influence and fill the void created by the ignorance of the majority.
And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the capacity to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it? We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people.
All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.
We could express this power in the following way: Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality. Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments, it is as if our minds—turned outward—are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative.
I’ve come to see “Bitches be crazy” as less a statement by men that women are crazy or even a reappropriated statement by women defending their own madness. Instead, I see the phrase and imagine a colon after “bitches,” rendering it a command to other women, a battle cry. It is a way of saying, “We took back ‘bitch’ already. And now we have come for ‘crazy.
In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did. But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut. I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was. He was born to be a king. It's what he was made for. It's what he was made to want.
You know, you're too pretty for me to leave you on the couch like that," he said, pulling me toward him. I didn't know that, but I did understand then that there was no such thing as safe, only safer; that this, if it didn't happen now, would happen later but not better.
The goal of argumentation is to make a case so forceful (note the metaphor) that skeptics are coerced into believing it—they are powerless to deny it while still claiming to be rational. In principle, it is the ideas themselves that are, as we say, compelling, but their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation (“Clearly . . .”), threat (“It would be unscientific to . . .”), authority (“As Popper showed . . .”), insult (“This work lacks the necessary rigor for . . .”), and belittling (“Few people today seriously believe that . . .”). Perhaps this is why H. L. Mencken wrote that “college football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students.
I remember a time when all I wanted was a gun and to learn how to use it. I thought a gun would make me feel safe. I thought a gun would make me feel powerful. But right now I just feel . . . heavy. Like I live in this world of death and destruction and I’ll never escape alive.
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But death, too, had the power to awe, she knew this now-that a human being could be alive for years and years, thinking and breathing and eating, full of a million worries and feelings and thoughts, taking up space in the world, and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible.
She dropped the things she was holding and desperately grabbed onto the table for support, but not before she hit the dresser directly with her stomach. The collision was hard. She expected pain. She expected to scream out. She expected to curdle up on the floor and whimper in agony.But she didn't.She gasped when she saw that due to the impact, the dresser had a minuscule dent. She didn't even feel the hit.
Consumption can be a remedy against boredom and may convey a sense of fictitious power and supremacy, by standing out from the crowd through the extravagance of the expenditure. As it becomes an addiction, however, it might be cured, if the right medication is administered : humbleness and mindful discovery of the others. (“Buying now, dying later”)
If she captured Tamlin’s power once, who’s to say she can’t do it again?” It was the question I hadn’t yet dared voice.“He won’t be tricked again so easily,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Her biggest weapon is that she keeps our powers contained. But she can’t access them, not wholly—though she can control us through them. It’s why I’ve never been able to shatter her mind—why she’s not dead already. The moment you break Amarantha’s curse, Tamlin’s wrath will be so great that no force in the world will keep him from splattering her on the walls.”A chill went through me.“Why do you think I’m doing this?” He waved a hand to me.“Because you’re a monster.”He laughed. “True, but I’m also a pragmatist. Working Tamlin into a senseless fury is the best weapon we have against her. Seeing you enter into a fool’s bargain with Amarantha was one thing, but when Tamlin saw my tattoo on your arm … Oh, you should have been born with my abilities, if only to have felt the rage that seeped from him.”I didn’t want to think much about his abilities. “Who’s to say he won’t splatter you as well?”“Perhaps he’ll try—but I have a feeling he’ll kill Amarantha first. That’s what it all boils down to, anyway: even your servitude to me can be blamed on her. So he’ll kill her tomorrow, and I’ll be free before he can start a fight with me that will reduce our once-sacred mountain to rubble.” He picked at his nails. “And I have a few other cards to play.”I lifted my brows in silent question.“Feyre, for Cauldron’s sake. I drug you, but you don’t wonder why I never touch you beyond your waist or arms?”Until tonight—until that damned kiss. I gritted my teeth, but even as my anger rose, a picture cleared.“It’s the only claim I have to innocence,” he said, “the only thing that will make Tamlin think twice before entering into a battle with me that would cause a catastrophic loss of innocent life. It’s the only way I can convince him I was on your side. Believe me, I would have liked nothing more than to enjoy you—but there are bigger things at stake than taking a human woman to my bed.”I knew, but I still asked, “Like what?”“Like my territory,” he said, and his eyes held a far-off look that I hadn’t yet seen. “Like my remaining people, enslaved to a tyrant queen who can end their lives with a single word. Surely Tamlin expressed similar sentiments to you.” He hadn’t—not entirely. He hadn’t been able to, thanks to the curse.“Why did Amarantha target you?” I dared ask. “Why make you her whore?”“Beyond the obvious?” He gestured to his perfect face. When I didn’t smile, he loosed a breath. “My father killed Tamlin’s father—and his brothers.”I started. Tamlin had never said—never told me the Night Court was responsible for that.“It’s a long story, and I don’t feel like getting into it, but let’s just say that when she stole our lands out from under us, Amarantha decided that she especially wanted to punish the son of her friend’s murderer—decided that she hated me enough for my father’s deeds that I was to suffer.”I might have reached a hand toward him, might have offered my apologies—but every thought had dried up in my head. What Amarantha had done to him …“So,” he said wearily, “here we are, with the fate of our immortal world in the hands of an illiterate human.
People are assholes, Mouse. You already know that.” He paused as he scooped some of my hair back, gently tossing the strands over my shoulder. “And there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”I glanced over at him. Everything about his steady gaze and the serious press of his lips screamed earnest. But he was wrong. “It is...embarrassing.”“Not if you don’t let it be.” His leg brushed mine as he turned in his seat, facing me. Our eyes met. “You have the power over that. People can say crap. They can think whatever they want, but you control how you feel about it.
In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana.
Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy—Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human—are deeply embedded not just in Christian history, but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous vices often lie hidden. . . . We are coming to see in the life and teaching of Christ, and especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ, a radical rejection of dominating supremacy in all its forms.The theological term for [this] is kenosis, which means self-emptying. . . . Rather than seizing, hoarding, and exercising power in the domineering ways of typical kings, conquistadors, and religious leaders, Jesus was consistently empowering others. He descended the ladders and pyramids of influence instead of climbing them upwards, released power instead of grasping at it, and served instead of dominating. He ultimately overturned all conventional understandings of . . . power by purging [it] of violence—to the point where he himself chose to be killed rather than kill.
What?”Lucien laughed. “Yes—all those female faeries around you were females for Tamlin to pick. It’s an honor to be chosen, but it’s his instincts that select her.”“But you were there—and other male faeries.” My face burned so hot that I began sweating. That was why those three horrible faeries had been there—and they’d thought that just by my presence, I was happy to comply with their plans.“Ah.” Lucien chuckled. “Well, Tam’s not the only one who gets to perform the rite tonight. Once he makes his choice, we’re free to mingle. Though it’s not the Great Rite, our own dalliances tonight will help the land, too.” He shrugged off that invisible hand a second time, and his eyes fell upon the hills. “You’re lucky I found you when I did, though,” he said. “Because he would have smelled you, and claimed you, but it wouldn’t have been Tamlin who brought you into that cave.” His eyes met mine, and a chill went over me. “And I don’t think you would have liked it. Tonight is not for lovemaking.
So, once again, back to the question - just what IS power?Is it perhaps no more than a deadly mutation of ambition, one that may or may not translate into social activity? Any fool, any moron, any psychopath can aspire to the seizure and exercise of power, and of course the more psychopathic, the more efficient: Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sergeant Doe and the latest in the line of the unconscionably driven, our own lately departed General Sanni Abacha - all have proved that power, as long as you are sufficiently ruthless, amoral and manipulative, is within the grasp of even the mentally deficient.
Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasion from outer space or power wielded from a subterranean command post: some alien force is about to take control on us, to dominate - and, if necessary in the process, to terminate our existence. We never stop to think - or, at best, a secondary consideration is whether such a force might be for the good, that humanity might indeed be improved by such a takeover. Volition, to which we desperately cling, is the very definition of our mature completion as social beings.
Little Pete. He’s not exactly just Astrid’s autistic brother.” He explained briefly while Toto added a chorus of “Sam believes that’s true” remarks.“How do we get Little Pete to do anything?” Dekka asked.“The last time Little Pete felt mortal danger he made the FAYZ,” Sam said. “He needs to be in mortal danger again.”Jack and Dekka exchanged a wary look, each wondering what the other had known or guessed about Little Pete.“Little Pete?” Jack asked. “That little kid has that kind of power?”“Yes,” Sam said simply. “Next to Pete, me, Caine, all of us, we’re like . . . like popguns compared to a cannon. We don’t even know what the limits of his powers are,” Sam said. “What we do know is we can’t communicate with him very well. We can’t even guess what he’s thinking.”“Little Pete,” Dekka muttered and shook her head. “I knew he was important, I got that a long time ago. But he can do that? He has that kind of power?” She pondered for a moment, nodded, and said, “I see why you kept it secret. It’s like having a nuclear weapon in the hands of, well, a little autistic kid.
The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.But Derek knew who they were.“No! No!” he cried.All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill.One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank.One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat.Derek dropped to his knees.Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape.Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down.“Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.”The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her.When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs.Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.”“Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit.“She’s a freak,” Hank said.“She’s my little sister. This is our home.”“She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.”“Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.”“It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.”“All she does is—”Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?”“Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.”He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?”Derek’s resistance died.“The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there.Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon.“Let me at least get her doll.
I will never be someone's last choice, second option, narcissistic supply, doormat, ego booster, sidekick, secret, last time or after thought. I am a Daughter of God that stands for truth. I know my beauty, my talents, my accomplishments, what I have to offer and who leads my life purpose: my Heavenly Father. But, most of all I know my value and I will never let any man define my worth.
The worst feeling in the world is not losing your friend forever, but rather having patronizing people tell you that the love you have for your friend and the connection and emotion you have towards them is an illness to be cured, a problem to be covered up and hidden away by the power of mood-altering drugs. I used to trust doctors when I was younger... now I've lost my trust in all mental health professionals forever.
Standing in the ring of fire, the eye of the storm, the vortex of pain and pressure is simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful place to be. Here we embody paradox. We stand our ground and surrender completely. Here we know the full power of the Feminine.
What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings when they would walk into the movie theater and men's eyes turned toward her, that moment when he offered her to the world. What he loved in her was his power and his ambition to live. Even his desire, the deepest craving of his flesh, probably derived from this initial astonishment at possessing a lovely body, at mastering and humiliating it.
But I believe that, once the shock settles, faith and energy will return. Because let’s be real: we always knew this shit wasn’t going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future—all will be consumed. Those of us whose ancestors were owned and bred like animals know that future all too well, because it is, in part, our past. And we know that by fighting, against all odds, we who had nothing, not even our real names, transformed the universe. Our ancestors did this with very little, and we who have more must do the same. This is the joyous destiny of our people—to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice that it will never be undone.
I encourage you, to take control to take back your power. Make the time and effort to invest in yourself. Self-care and healing. Taking time for stillness and contemplation. Reflect on your own behaviour. Decide what kind of person you want to be and then take the steps to be that person.
…egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, ‘We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.’ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.
Have you ever sat on a window seat in the train of your memories while it's raining heavily? Rain has this ridiculous power of waking up all the angels and demons inside us at once doesn't it?. All of a sudden there is a war inside us between both the sides. We can do nothing but clench our fists and watch our train derail and take a path we have never come across before. All we know at that point of time is that we are going to crash somewhere. Either our demons win or the angels, we are going to get wounded somewhere.
Caine’s a guy who needs to win. He needs to win before he poofs. Or he needs to win before I poof. The point is, he’s not going to just accept us freeing all these kids from Coates and taking over Perdido Beach,” Sam said. “So we need to be ready. And we need to be ready for something else, too: tomorrow is my birthday.” He made a wry face. “Not a birthday I’m exactly looking forward to. But, anyway, we need to decide who takes over for me if…when…I step outside.”Several of the kids made sympathetic or encouraging noises about how Sam maybe wasn’t going to blink out, or maybe it would be a good thing, an escape from the FAYZ. But Sam hushed them all.“Look, the good thing is, when I go, so does Caine. The bad thing is, that still leaves Drake and Diana and other bullies. Orc…well, we don’t exactly know what’s going on with him, but Howard’s not with him. And Lana…we don’t know what happened to her, whether she left or what.”The loss of Lana was a serious blow. Every one of the Coates refugees adored her for the way she had healed their hands. And it was reassuring to think that she could heal anyone who was injured.Astrid said, “I nominate Edilio to take over if…you know. Anyway, we need a number two, a vice president or vice mayor or whatever.”Edilio did a double take, like Astrid must be talking about some other Edilio. Then he said, “No way. Astrid’s the smartest person here.”“I have Little Pete to look after. Mary has to care for the prees and keep them out of harm’s way. Dahra has responsibility for treating anyone who gets hurt. Elwood has been so busy in the hospital with Dahra, he hasn’t dealt with Caine or Drake or any of the Coates faction. Edilio’s been up against Orc and Drake. And he’s always been brave and smart and able.” She winked at Edilio, acknowledging his discomfort.“Right,” Sam said. “So unless someone has an objection, that’s the way it is. If I get hurt or I ditch, Edilio’s in charge.”“Respect to Edilio,” Dekka said, “but he doesn’t even have powers.”“He has the power to earn trust and to come through when he has to,
Caine has Drake and Orc, Panda and Chaz, and I hear Mallet has made peace with him. And maybe a half dozen other guys.”“Are you afraid of them?” Astrid asked him.“Yeah, Astrid, I am.”“Okay,” she said. “But you were scared of going into a burning building, too.”“You don’t get this, do you?” Sam demanded with enough heat that Astrid took a step back. “I know what you want, okay? I know what you and a bunch of other people want. You want me to be the anti-Caine. You don’t like the way he’s doing things and you want me to go kick him out. Well, here’s what you don’t know: even if I could do all that, I wouldn’t be any better than him.”“You’re wrong about that, Sam. You’re—”“That night when I first used the power? When I hurt my stepfather? How do you think I felt?”“Sad. Regretful.” Astrid looked at his face like the answer would be written there. “Scared, probably.”“Yeah. All that. And one more thing.” He held up his hand and inches from her nose squeezed his fingers into a tight fist. “I also felt a rush, Astrid. A rush. I thought, oh my God, look at the power I have. Look what I can do. A huge, crazy rush.”“Power corrupts,” Astrid said softly.“Yeah,” Sam said sarcastically. “I’ve heard that.”“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I forget who said it.”“I make a lot of mistakes, Astrid. I don’t want to make that mistake. I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be Caine. I want to…” He spread his arms wide, a gesture of helplessness. “I just want to go surfing.”“You won’t be corrupted, Sam. You wouldn’t do those things.” He had moved back. She moved to close the distance.“How can you be so sure?”“Well, two reasons. First, it’s not your character. Of course you felt a rush from the power. Then, you pushed it away. You didn’t grab at it, you pushed it away. That’s reason number one. You’re you, you’re not Caine or Drake or Orc.”Sam wanted to agree, wanted to accept that, but he felt he knew better. “Don’t be so sure.”“And reason number two: you have me,
What the hell was that?” he asked no-one in particular. “Did they ram us?”“Uh – negative, sir.” Marnetti offered, reading an instrumental assessment from his display, “It seems we were hit by some kind of pulse wave generated by their jump.”“Their jump? – You mean by arriving they nearly killed us?”Marnetti nodded, continuing, “Range 0.5 kilometers, Captain. Holding steady. No recognized weapons activity.”“Damage report.” He ordered, feeling his way back into his seat, eyes glued to the viewscreen.“Shield 2 down, 1 is buckling.” Pluddeman choked.“Power stable, all systems holding steady,” Marnetti added, now rubbing some bruises.“Any communications?”“Nothing, sir. Static on all frequencies.”“What are they doing?”“Nothing, sir. Waiting maybe.”“Waiting, my ass!” Dayne barked. “They must be sizing us up!
Seeing his daughter slowly die, coupled with his infinite sadness and misery, the clockmaker becomes a recluse to the tower of the castle and begins to build something behind closed doors, not even his daughter knows what he’s up to. For five years, she only sees him briefly at meal-times before locking himself up in the tower once again...""...Did he have a bathroom in the tower?""Yes, Jack. A big one! En-suite! Power-shower and spa! Where was I!?
Every witch or wizard with a wand has held in his or her hands more power than we will ever know. With the right spell or potion, they can fabricate love, travel through time, change physical form and even extinguish life.
Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion. My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only “rights,” the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful
Utility electricity is a known hazardous biological toxin and the toxicity of it is increasing as it progresses into harmonic electronic power generation (Wind & Solar) and wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation smart/AMR/AMI meters.
The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power--and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being.
We are plagued by a corrupt polity which promotes unlawful and/or immoral behaviour. Public interest has no practical significance in everyday behaviour among the ruling factions. The real problems of our world are not being confronted by those in power. In the guise of public service, they use whatever comes to hand for personal gain. They are insane with and for power.
The unparalleled truth shall always outlive the lies. Goodness can prevail depending on the unwavering courage of those who hold the unparalleled truth.In a very corrupt culture, I am not so sure that justice can always prevail because the power lies on who is manipulating and who are being manipulated by the most powerful hand that can destroy you, kill you or spare your life.~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my K.H. Trilogy
The religious right sees every group trying to achieve equality with them as a threat, because if they become equal to them, THEY won't be able to abuse their human rights anymore. Giving other people equality WITH THEM, in their minds takes something away from THEM - POWER - and that TERRIFIES them. It scares them shitless.
A millenarian fire burned in Oppenheimer’s spirit, fueled by his pride as a world-historical individual, by his fear that the natural force he loosed upon the world would escape all human control, and by a pure-hearted longing to ensure that his discovery of the devastation latent in the elemental substance of the world would serve concord rather than the ultimate discord, perpetual peace rather than permanent self-destruction.
Oppenheimer, haunted by his leading role in the first use of atomic weapons, understood only one aspect of prudence. His longing not to do evil himself blinded him to the need to ward off the evil of others. This painfully knotted man hoped with one swipe of his moral sword to rid himself of the impossible tangle and to be clear and simple for once in his life. But being Oppenheimer could never be as easy as that.For Oppenheimer embodied two of the highest human types, the theoretical man described by Aristotle as god-like for living in the mind, among changeless truths, and the paragon of Machiavellian virtue, god-like in commanding the power of life and death over other men. No theoretical man before Oppenheimer had known such lordly power. In certain high moments he approached that Aristotelian theoretical purity which lives for the joys of knowing the world, whatever it might prove to be; in another light he thrilled at that Machiavellian power and its attendant renown; in contrary moods he reviled himself for the suffering he brought into the world, and ached to renounce his distinction and to be merely another man among men. Perhaps no theoretical man can be equal to such a burden: to feel knowledge as power when one’s mind reshapes the world irrevocably, to see the light of truth as the agent of some dark majesty, is not grace but ordeal. Oppenheimer’s agony tore him open from top to bottom.
I mean No is power. No says, "I'm in charge." Think about how many times you've said yes in the past year, and how many times you would've liked to have said no instead. Maybe being able to say no is the one thing that keeps us sane. Some people go through their whole lives saying yes over and over again--yes to things they don't want to do but feel obliged to; yes to things that allow other people to take advantage of them, just because that's the way things are, the way things have always been. Some people need to learn how to say no. Because every time they say yes, they say no to themselves.
The top easily preventable health problems that I see in western societies are: 1. Eating chemically grown food. 2. Exposure to electronically generated harmonic energy from wind and solar power systems. 3. Exposure to harmonic energy from switched mode power supplies (SMPS) that come with modern electronic products. 4. Exposure to wireless radio frequency radiation (RF). 5. Light deficiency from an indoor lifestyle and Low-E double glazed windows. 6. Sound deficiency from heavily insulated homes that are devoid of natural sounds and are extremely quiet. 7. Pollen deficiency from living in man-made cities that are devoid of natural levels of pollen. 8. Natural radiation deficiency from living in homes that block natural levels of environmental radiation. 9. Open drain sickness that occurs when drain traps dry out and faulty vent valves that allow sewer gas to fill the home. 10. Drinking the wrong type of water.
Religious extremism is fatal to those who don't conform to its values, or remold or submit themselves to its 'principles'. It craves control and power - and power is the one tool that enables it to wreak its characteristic havoc, destruction and cruelty upon those it chooses to label as scapegoats. Giving in to extremists enables them and empowers them - and worse, it encourages them.
From my keen observation, it is a very sad fact that the Philippines’ current administration's drug war crisis has fully pressed the pedal of acceleration to more division, hatred, cycles of violence (copycat killings, summary killings, extra judicial killings, collateral victims of drug war), toxic revenge, and perpetual impunity. ~ Angelica Hopes, reflections on Drug War in the Philippines
Break out to go out___________________The birds dare to break the egg shellIt does so in order to get out of that HellWhen it finally succeeds, it’ll then flyTo its comfort zone it’ll say byeAre you being confined in a small spaceHow long will you remain at that place?Before you can explore more territories,Break away from the former glories.Yesterday’s excellence is today’s averageYou must strive to be better age after ageNever accept the available mediocrityAs the only preferable opportunityDecide to grow from below to heroAnd make it a point to vacate level zeroReach out and arise with powerGod’s blessings on you, will showerAgree to grow, never attempt to be slowBe not afraid. Never doubt. You’ll flowThe grace of God will be your guideTaking you along, side by side.
Common sense and every material reality insisted upon the unification of human life throughout the planet and the socialisation of its elementary needs, and pitted against that was the fact that every authority, every institution, every established way of thinking and living was framed to preserve the advantages of the ruling and possessing minority and the separate sovereignty of the militant states that had been evolved within the vanished circumstances of the past.
The woman leant forward, her eyes flashing, a smile both triumphant and tender curving her mouth."You are *my* daughter," she said. "Can there be any doubt that you will be brilliant -- audacious -- and free?"The vision disappeared. She had been so vital, so overflowing with life and energy, that her going seemed to leave the room dark.
The essential question was always "Who are these fellows who give us orders? By what warrant? And how do we benefit and how does the world benefit? But they are doing no good to anyone, no real good even to themselves! This is not government and leadership; this is imposture. Why stand it?...Why stand it?
Love is an intangible thing. When you truly love, you learn that what you feel is more significant than anything that you can see. Love has more power than any weapon. It is more life giving than food or medicine. Sometimes love lasts forever and sometimes it lasts just long enough to teach you what you need to learn.
In order to protect their good names for posterity, many writers never wrote what they thought or the truth as it stood. That's why truth still lies hidden in matters of power, sex and religion. No wonder they chose to do so, many who dared paid with their heads
We aren't victims of circumstance, we are co creators of our own reality. Self absorbed people may silence you, by projecting their undesirable traits on to you. You have power. You don't have to be a silent sheep. You can roar like a lion. Expression is what the narcissist, sociopath, and the psychopath fear the most when you start to speak for your self. When you start to stand up for your self - you become your greatest version. YOU are worthy. YOU have a choice to be around people, who are nurturing to your being and help you grow.
There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. In the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion. The mere idea of Aunt Lydia doing such a thing was in itself heartening. So now I imagine, among these Angels and their drained white brides, momentous grunts and sweating, damp furry encounters; or, better, ignominious failures, cocks like three-week-old carrots, anguished fumblings upon flesh cold and unresponding as uncooked fish.
All ponzi schemes are upheld by a centripetal force caused by those orbiting the circles of power, celebrity and wealth and trying to get in. When the ponzi scheme reaches its point of maximum growth, the force disperses and the ponzi scheme collapses.
Adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the temporal power that we mistakenly identify with the fruits of justice? Do you think they needed it, or cared?
We have all heard the phrase "information is power" and in the world of social media, information is abundant. I started thinking...we are some well informed peopled on a myriad of topics but is it the information that is power or is the true power in what we do with the information? I think information is a tool and sometimes that tool falls into hands that have no clue how to use it; rendering it powerless.
It throbbed with an inhuman power, tidal and deep and painful. Look at this too long, Elvi thought, and I will lose my mind in it. She took a step toward it, feeling the structures in the blackness respond to her. She felt as if she could see the spaces between molecules in the air, like atoms themselves had become a thin fog, and for the first time she could see the true shape of reality looming up just beyond her reach.
The question I'm most commonly asked is "Why?" A more pertinent question might be, why is it that more people don't attempt to escape the limitations imposed upon them? If Tracks has a message at all, it is that one can be awake to the demand for obedience that seems natural simply because it is familiar. Wherever there is pressure to conform (one person's conformity is often in the interests of another person's power), there is a requirement to resist. Of course I did not mean that people should drop what they were doing and head for the wilder places, certainly not that they should copy what I did. I meant that one can choose adventure in the most ordinary of circumstances. Adventure of the mind, or to use an old-fashioned word, the spirit.
To figure out what was really happening behind the clichés, I'd learned, meant a practice of looking not at the center but at the edges of things—at the unlikeliest and weakest people, not the most apparently powerful. It meant asking lots of stupid questions, making room for inconvenient facts that didn't fit a schema, and trying to remain honest about what I didn't know.
The power structure understands that Black folks have been hungry for so long, fixing us a plate now that's the same size as theirs would do nothing for our hunger. After all, they're pretty full and fat.They know we now require a much bigger plate than theirs to quiet the stomach rumblings.They see us and know what it looks like to be less powerful. They are fighting to never FEEL it.
Whenever the balance of power was unequal, there was a driver and a driven. Power was the lethal vice, the turn-on with evil built into it, because it required a victim to manifest itself. Power implied subject and object. They needed some way to recognize (for everyone to recognize) that everybody was a subject.
If you are looking for a job that may make you sick, I can recommend working at a high powered solar photovoltaic (PV) utility power plant.
The USA utility power generation industry subcontracts out their dangerous jobs so that the bad statisitics will not be associated with them. Smart people avoid working for the subcontractors. I have worked directly for a number of subcontractors and overseen subcontractors and their staff were clearly sick, showing behavioral problems and overworked. In some cases they were blatantly breaking OSHA laws. OSHA covers it all up! Unfortunately, the problems can be traced back to OSHA and their wilful lack of enforcement of the law.
Dex crouched down next to her, lips level with her ear. "You know, you were a lot more fun three years ago."It was like he wanted her to kill him.She turned, unfazed that their faces were separated by mere centimeters. So close she could see the pores in his caramel skin, the deep brown of his eyes, and the raised scar that rested near his temple.She'd given him that scar.What she also noticed was how her heart no longer fluttered like it used to when he looked at her. She used to love his eyes, their unspoken words. The feel of his skin against hers during their passionate nights, but now those thoughts made her cringe. She guarded herself against those details scrounged from distant memories. They were no longer part of a blissful reality but a hurtful past."A lot has changed in three years, Dextro," Andi said calmly. "Now if you don't move, I'll give you a new scar, and this time," she said, pointing to his right temple, "it will be across your neck."He put his arms up in defense before rising, distancing himself from her.
Sadly enough, some people are insecure in such a way that they cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than themselves. It makes them feel insignificant. But I know if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to the point that which it, perhaps, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my sheer humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my original Creator.
I’ve come to believe that the function of torture in our society is not about getting information, in spite of what we might want to believe. It is merely about power. It tells the world that there is now no limit to what we will do when we feel threatened.
The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become what he is, an individual. From becoming an individual no one, no one at all, is excluded, except he who excludes himself by becoming a crowd. To become a crowd, to collect a crowd about one, is on the contrary to affirm the distinctions of human life. The most well-meaning person who talks about these distinctions can easily offend an individual. But then it is not the crowd which possesses power, influence, repute, and mastery over men, but it is the invidious distinctions of human life which despotically ignore the single individual as the weak and impotent, which in a temporal and worldly interest ignore the eternal truth- the single individual.
Love has the power to create an inviting space in the lives of people. But if daily routine kills dreamy or passionate thoughts, the constraint of the room may become oppressive and the emptiness unbearable. The room loses then its original fullness and turns into a place of nothingness. ( " Another empty room" )
In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its power.
It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything.
Being idolized and being torn down felt oddly similar. They both made me feel alone.Friendship and trust should be earned, and when you're famous, people seem to want to give them to you whether you've earned them or not, and it felt dishonest to me. Fame was not real. It was all a projection—fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon. Fame and power do not change us, they amplify us.
Why don't people with money and power realize that when they screw around with the little guy when they don't have to—especially when it's a little guy like me with not a damn thing to lose—sometimes the little guy is just going to get pissed off and stubborn up?
It is easier to call the storm from the empty sky than to manipulate the heart of a man; and soon, if my bones did not lie to me, I should be needing all the power I could muster, to pit against a woman; and this is harder to do than anything concerning men, as air is harder to see than a mountain.
All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power.
In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. On this planet nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. Girls and boys, men and women who have been taught this way almost always believe love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important as being powerful, dominant, in control, on top-being right. Women who give seemingly selfless adoration and care to the men in their lives appear to be obsessed with 'love,' but in actuality their actions are often a covert way to hold power. Like their male counterparts, they enter relationships speaking the words of love even as their actions indicate that maintaining power and control is their primary agenda.
Bliss is doing that which fulfills you. Action that touches you deeply and fully. Bliss is active. Bliss is...following your dreams, desires, or heart. Bliss is that deep, fulfilling, sustainable, driving need you have. That thing that is the true "you."Your bliss is your life's purpose. Your bliss gives your otherwise meaningless life meaning. When you are following your bliss you are powerful and empowered. You are focused and the universe is waiting to help you.
Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion sufficient enough to love and save each other.
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.
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.
When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.
What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.... Be very chary of revealing your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else's strings.
Think about rethinking what you're thinking, before speaking the thought you were thinking, and cause unintended consequences for speaking what you probably shouldn't have been thinking.
It's amazing how much power a smile holds. It's contagious and brightens people's day. It's also the most powerful camouflage. For that person who seems to have it all together is merely masking the pain of drowning tears. Don't be so quick to assume.
Having a positive attitude gives you power. This isn't the same kind of power that dictators and warlords seek after, but rather a spiritual power. It's a power that comes to us from God.
I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.
The oppressor is solidary wit the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor -- when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.
I am a man, and as foolish and weak as most men; if I have had an advantage over my fellows, it is that I have known this of myself, and have therefore known their weaknesses, and never presumed to find much more strength and wisdom in myself than I found in another. It was one of the sources of my power, that knowledge.
You have the power to make your own choices. Everything in this world depends upon you ... its all about how you want to spend your life .. once you understand this fact you can come out of illusions of life .. just ask yourself what you want !! Your heart will definitely tell you the truth, and then ... who stops you ??? Its a question and answer as well
She broke my heart. My mother broke my heart. If I love Rachel she’ll have more power than both of them combined because this overwhelming pulse in my body...this overwhelming need to protect her and hold her close...I nuzzle into her hair and close my eyes, inhaling the sweet scent of jasmine. I should let her go, let her go, just let her go. Walk away now. Hang on to what’s left of my s
Three generations before I was the one meant for the necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in theair, yes, lift my body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him.
No, war is never about killing the enemy. War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.
O’Brien: How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?Winston: By making him suffer.O’Brien: Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
There’s a power I only feel when I’m with Isaiah. A boldness I’ve never possessed in my life. Never in a million years would I have imagined I’d be the girl who’d say she was falling fast for a boy before he did. Never in a million years did I think I’d be lying in bed with a totally ripped guy that has his shirt off. But Isaiah has this effect on me. He makes me feel stronger than I really am.
Power makes you lazy. Insofar as our earlier theoretical discussion of structural violence revealed anything, it was this: that while those in situations of power and privilege often feel it as a terrible burden of responsibility, in most ways, most of the time, power is all about what you don't have to worry about, don't have to know about, and don't have to do.
The silent workers get lost in the endlessdarkness of the corporate world. Thosewho work hard and constantly seek tobe visible to their superiors, those whoshowcase their hard work, are the ones whoadvance to positions of greater power andresponsibility.
Man can attempt to become one with the world by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. In this way, he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself, and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted.
Right. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining? That's a totally different world.
Why did this [Vietnam] war, so hard, so long, so ferocious, vanish from one day to the next as if by magic?Why did this American defeat (the largest reversal in the history of the USA) have no internal repercussions in America? If it had really signified the failure of the planetary strategy of the United States, it would necessarily have completely disrupted its internal balance and the American political system.
The black world was expanding before me, and I could see now that that world was more than a photonegative of that of the people who believe they are white. "White America" is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, "white people" would cease to exist for want of reasons.
Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drank of the untaxed liquor of Satan’s still.
But this aura of an artificial menace was still necessary to conceal that they [Presidents] were no longer anything but the mannequins of power. Formerly, the king (also the god) had to die, therein lay his power. Today, he is miserably forced to feign death, in order to preserve the blessing of power. But it is lost.
But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme power that is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination - the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God?
In China the egalitarian movement came not just from Zhu's vision, but also the Taoist ideas of balance, as Zhu would always point out. In Travancore it rose out of the Buddhist idea of compassion, in Yingzhou from the Hodenosaunee idea of the equality of all, in Firanja from the idea of justice before God. Everywhere the idea existed, but the world still belonged to a tiny minority of rich; wealth had been accumulating for centuries in a few hands, and the people lucky enough to be born into this old aristocracy lived in the old manner, with the rights of kings now spread among the wealthy of the Earth. Money had replaced land as the basis of power, and money flowed according to its own gravity, its laws of accumulation, which though divorced from nature, were nevertheless the laws ruling most countries on Earth, no matter their religious or philosophical ideas of love, compassion, charity, equality, goodness, and the like. Old Zhu had been right: humanity's behavior was still based on old laws, which determined how food and land and water and surplus wealth around, how the labor of the eight billions was owned. If these laws did not change, the living shell of the earth might well be wrecked, and inherited by seagulls and ants and cockroaches.
Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined.
Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Certainly, symbols are power – you wear one wherever you go, that purse you carry. And you wear others when you decide to dress yourself, how to look at men and women, how to carry your body and direct your gaze. And all these symbols can raise people to labour or war.
The institution of monarchy developed during the Middle Ages against the backdrop of the previously endemic struggles between feudal power agencies. The monarchy presented itself as a referee, aa power capable of putting an end to war, violence, and pillage and saying no to these struggles and private feuds. It made itself acceptable by allocating itself a juridical and negative function, albeit one whose limits it naturally began at once to overstep.
I'm struck by the difficulty I had in formulating it. When I think back now, I ask myself what else it was that I was talking about in Madness and Civilization or The Birth of the Clinic, but power? Yet I'm perfectly aware that I scarcely ever used the word and never had such a field of analyses at my disposal. I can say that this was an incapacity linked undoubtedly with the political situation in which we found ourselves. It is hard to see where, either on the Right or the Left, this problem of power could then have been posed. On the Right, it was posed only in terms of constitution, sovereignty, and so on, that is, in juridical terms; on the Marxist side, it was posed only in terms of the state apparatus. The way power was exercised - concretely, and in detail - with its specificity, its techniques and tactics, was something no one attempted to ascertain; they contented themselves with denouncing it in a polemical and global fashion as it existed among the "other," in the adversary camp. Where Soviet socialist power was in question, its opponents called it totalitarianism; power in Western capitalism was denounced by the Marxists as class domination; but the mechanics of power in themselves were never analyzed.
In a sense, I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us. We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just power in the narrow sense of the word, referring to the power of a government or of one social group over another: these are only a few particular instances of power. Power is anything that tends to render immobile and untouchable those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good
The powerful are like a compressor, they will grind into paste everything on their way
And then there were men who were violently afraid of losing to a woman, the scariest men in the world. They become dictators, heads of state, bureaucrats, men with deadly weapons, they were everywhere. Sometimes she could pick one out with a look, but they were often charming, they had to have the power to attract in order to dominate.
I have not spent my time studying the problem of "race"—"race" itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem. You see this from time to time when some dullard—usually believing himself white—proposes that the way forward is a grand orgy of black and white, ending only when we are all beige and thus the same "race." But a great number of "black" people already are beige. And the history of civilization is littered with dead "races" (Frankish, Italian, German, Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purpose—the organization of people beneath, and beyond, the umbrella of rights.
Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with the figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it served your superior.
Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind.Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed.The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it.When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed. Violence, precipitate and stark, is the sire of the fear of such people. It is spawned by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere. Of course, physical violence is the most obvious cause. But here, it is important to point out, a particular kind of physical violence or its counterpart is evidenced; it is violence that is devoid of the element of contest. It is what is feared by the rabbit that cannot ultimately escape the hounds.
What some politicians really mean when they saythis country: me, my party, my ethnic groupinternational justice is biased: they want to arrest meterrorists: oppositionillegal immigrants: refugeeselections: remaining in powerpeace: eliminating the oppositioninternational community: the rich countriesthe people: sympathisers of my party
The arbitrary character of patriarchal ascriptions of temperament and role has little effect upon their power over us. Nor do the mutually exclusive, contradictory, and polar qualities of the categories “masculine” and “feminine” imposed upon human personality give rise to sufficiently serious question among us. Under their aegis each personality becomes little more, and often less than half, of its human potential. Politically, the fact that each group exhibits a circumscribed but complementary personality and range of activity is of secondary importance to the fact that each represents a status or power division. In the matter of conformity patriarchy is a governing ideology without peer; it is probably that no other system has ever exercised such a complete control over its subjects.
I have seen the poor suffer when nobles seek the purity of ideals. I have seen the powerless die when princes believe in the nostalgia of their dreams. I have seen the common people torn from peace and thrown into war when kings yearn to test the clarity of their vision.
He intrigued her. Powerful men, in her experience, were usually not so full of doubt. Kuni was consumed by the desire to do good for others, but uncertain what "good" might be and whether he was the right man for the job.Kuni was the sort of man, Risana realized, who, rather than deceive himself, was so full of self-doubt that he could not longer see himself
Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah's time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.' She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that all would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame.
Your true power is not in your difference, but in your consistency of being different. The world will always adjust to consistency, yet struggle with change.
A revolutionary war of freedom, he said” Hiawatha responded crisply, “and I agree… does Superman ever fly to Thailand and free the kids slaving in the sweat shops owned by the rich corporations? No, he doesn’t. Does Batman ever break into prison and free the wrongfully convicted and over sentenced black man whose rights were trampled on when he was incarcerated? No, he doesn’t. Does Spider man ever break into a house in suburbia and beat up the abusive and violent husband? No, he doesn’t.” “Do the Fantastic Four ever fly out to third world countries and defend the rights of the poor civilians against greedy American corporations? No, they don’t,” said the Pirate, not to be outdone. “They’re all just tools used by the state to maintain the status quo,” said Hiawatha.
The power of the word is completely misused in hell. We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our personal poison - to express anger, jealousy, envy, and hate. The word is pure magic - the most powerful gift we have as humans - and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge. We create chaos with the word. We use the word to create hate between different races, between different people, between families, between nations. We misuse the word so often, and this misuse is how we create and perpetuate the dream of hell. Misuse of the word is how we pull each other down and keep each other in a state of fear and doubt.
You made me laugh at your jokes.You made me cry at your criticism.You made me shout at your lies.Then I noticed how in every case someone else was present, hearing you without laughter or tears or anger.I alone reacted.I see now; you never made me laugh or cry or rage.I chose to find humor.I chose to take offense.I chose to feel scorned.The truth is, you never had power over me.
Is not the true respect and worship of God the exercising of our power in such a way that we are also respected?
The power of the word is completely misused in hell. We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our personal poison - to express anger, jealousy, envy, and hate. The words is pure magic - the most powerful gift we have as humans - and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge. We create chaos with the word. We use the word to create hate between different races, between different people, between families, between nations. We misuse the word so often, and this misuse is how we create and perpetuate the dream of hell. Misuse of the word is how we pull each other down and keep each other in a state of fear and doubt.
Believe in yourselves as sons and daughters of God, men and women with unlimited potential to do good in the world. Believe in personal virtue. There is no substitute for it anywhere under the. heavens. Believe in your power to discipline yourselves against the evils which could destroy you. Believe in one another as the greatest generation ever yet to live upon the earth.
Believe in God our Eternal Father, He who is greatest of all, who stands ever ready to help us and who has the power to do so. Believe in Jesus Christ, the Savior and the Redeemer of mankind, the worker of miracles, the greatest who ever walked the earth, the intercessor with our Father. Believe in the power of the Holy Ghost to lead, to inspire, to comfort, to protect. Believe in the Prophet Joseph, as an instrument in the hands of the Almighty in ushering in this the dispensation of the fullness of times.
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Malinda moved so we were eye-level. "Forget the people who've hurt you. You don't have them anymore, but you have two others that'll do anything to you. Mason and Logan would move mountains for you. I see how you are with them. You love them, but you're scared to let yourself be happy. Why? Because that's when they'll leave? Is that what you think? You've got it all wrong. Those two will never leave you." She tapped my chest. Once. Twice. "You. You're the one that's going to hurt them. You have that power, and you don't know it. You could rip those two apart in a second, and they're the ones who are scared of you. Not the other way around. You need to recognize the real situation.
If one assumes, as I do, that battery is caused by the belief permeating this culture that hierarchical rule and coercive authority are natural, then all our relationships tend to be based on power and domination, and thus all forms of battery are linked.
Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation.The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks’s mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer.
When you believe you have lost your power and control nothing will ever seem easy or simple.
The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness.
I inadvertently had a very high dose of environmental transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) when commissioning a very high powered utility electronic power plant and I can assure you that it can do very strange things to your thinking and the effects last a very long time!
We come into this world through women: a woman who is spent, broken open, in awe. No wonder women have been worshiped ever since men first saw the crowning of a head, here, legs spread, a brushstroke of light. We are fire. We are water. We are earth. We are air. We are all things elemental. The world begins with "Yes,"Changing women: we begin again like the moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait: waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. This is not patience, but pathology. We are sensual, sexual beings, intrinsically bound to both heaven and earth, our bodies a hologram. In our withholding of power, we abrogate power, and that creates war. The Australian poet Judith Wright says, "Our dream was the wrong dream, our strength was the wrong strength. Wounded, we cross the desert's emptiness and must be false to what would make us whole.
By all means be submissive in the bedroom (if you are that way inclined), but don't be submissive to life. Being life's bitch is no fun at all. Life may play up in many ways, but it's up to you to take control, take charge and put life in its place.
There is no limit on the level that the reflections can be at and in a modern environment, such as a city, the albedo can increase the power levels many times of the sky based solar radiation of direct and diffuse combined. The trees prevent the albedo reflections from occurring.
...a guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.
We are all capable of being great dreamers. We must awaken the divinity within us.
Maybe it is not a coincidence that, even in heaven, under the perspective of the Bible, there is a hierarchy. After all, what better way to impose the “benefits” of accepting the power of a hierarchy in the human mind?
Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce- to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independence. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth. It's intrinsic.
Whatever the religion, we are formatted to accept hierarchy without any questions and while most management studies discuss business models, organisation and power structure, they seldom question the different types of hierarchies. One has to wonder if this hierarchy really is an absolute truth…
Friends are like the stars that glow in the sky... you don't always see them, but you know they're always there overhead, and even when it's cloudy, snowy or stormy, even when the power goes out and you're trapped in darkness, they'll always find a way to shine through to you.
Speak to me about power. What is it?” I do believe I’m being out-Cambridged. “You want me to discuss power? Right here and now?” Her shapely head tilts. “No time except the present.” “Okay.” Only for a ten. “Power is the ability to make someone do what they otherwise wouldn’t, or deter them from doing what they otherwise would.” Immaculée Constantin is unreadable. “How?” “By coercion and reward. Carrots and sticks, though in bad light one looks much like the other. Coercion is predicated upon the fear of violence or suffering. ‘Obey, or you’ll regret it.’ Tenth-century Danes exacted tribute by it; the cohesion of the Warsaw Pact rested upon it; and playground bullies rule by it. Law and order relies upon it. That’s why we bang up criminals and why even democracies seek to monopolize force.” Immaculée Constantin watches my face as I talk; it’s thrilling and distracting. “Reward works by promising ‘Obey and benefit.’ This dynamic is at work in, let’s say, the positioning of NATO bases in nonmember states, dog training, and putting up with a shitty job for your working life. How am I doing?” Security Goblin’s sneeze booms through the chapel. “You scratch the surface,” says Immaculée Constantin. I feel lust and annoyance. “Scratch deeper, then.” She brushes a tuft of fluff off her glove and appears to address her hand: “Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long-term side effects. Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul. Power’s comings and goings, from host to host, via war, marriage, ballot box, diktat, and accident of birth, are the plot of history. The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields, and bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral.” Immaculée Constantin now looks up at me. “Power will notice you. Power is watching you now. Carry on as you are, and power will favor you. But power will also laugh at you, mercilessly, as you lie dying in a private clinic, a few fleeting decades from now. Power mocks all its illustrious favorites as they lie dying. ‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.’ That thought sickens me, Hugo Lamb, like nothing else. Doesn’t it sicken you?
Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.
It is not within my power to refuse the journey of life regardless of the nature of my fears or the depth of my selfishness, for the definitions of ‘journey’ and ‘life’ are indistinguishably synonymous. I can however sufficiently inhibit them and amply fight them to the point that I have accepted the journey, but the journey is now solely defined as my effort to forsake the journey.
Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and grovelling submission to those you can't. Once having set up her idols and built altars to the, it was imevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she would accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who recieve homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped Though indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
Recognise and reach out to the inherent great power within you.
The more we abide in Christ, the more His grace and power transform us into His image.
The meaning of life in western secular society is to be successful. So many people are success mad and they are encouraged to reach for something and have so called "worthwhile goals". Money, fame, power, good looks, possessions are the indicators of success and the media and advertising companies exploit this. People are conditioned to believe that they can only feel happy or good about themselves if they have these things. This of course is not true.
Is it your implication that no good will come of this expedition?’‘Oh it will, sir; there’s no denying that.’ Captain Chillingworth’s words emerged very slowly, as if they had been pulled up from a deep well of bitterness. ‘I am sure it will do a great deal of good for some of us. But I doubt I’ll be of that number, or that many Chinamen will. The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.
May the power of the Holy Spirit give us the grace, strength and wisdom.
I've always felt Lex Luthor is intensely threatened by any status or distinction he can’t buy, hence the antipathy to Superman's powers and Bruce Wayne's status as old money. Money is Luthor's superpower, and anything he can’t obtain or control with it is his kryptonite. Unlike Superman, he takes a proactive view of his kryptonite. It shouldn’t exist and he’ll do all he can to eradicate it wherever he finds it.
Millions are impressed by the victories of power and take it for the sign of strength. To be sure, power over people is an expression of superior strength in a purely material sense. If I have the power over another person to kill him, I am "stronger" than he is. But in a psychological sense, the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness. It is the expression of inability of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking.
The power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won’t get you what you want.” His words perplexed me. Wasn’t power singular and simple? In the world that I knew, men just happened to have more of it. (I hoped to change this.)
I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.
They are me, these women. They are the ones who taught me to see; I taught me to see. They, we, are the ones healing the Ginen story, fighting to destroy that cancerous trade in shiploads of African bodies that ever demands to be fed more sugar, more rum, more Nubian gold.
We are all here, all the powers of the Ginen lives for all the centuries that they have been in existence, and we all fight. We change when change is needed. We are a little different in each place that the Ginen have come to rest, and any one of is already many powers. No cancer can fell us all, no blight cover us completely.
Made from divinity must mean mindstate to create is intrinsic - no fiction. Stop playin' with your power, your inner 'G', and build on purpose - accordingly. Being free is for free, so force the issue.
Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.
Envy and respect are not the same things...Before I endow you with respect, I should find out whether your curiosity is intellectual or merely morbid. Not that those who gawk at train derailments are so different from those who conduct autopsies; both want, at some level, to know what has happened, and, by extension, what will happen. Did the liver fail because of the decedent's alcoholism or was some toxin administered? If the deliverer is found, he or she may be imprisoned or, in more honest times, hanged, and thus pose no further threat. Or for the gawker at the accident, espying loose parts not unlike his or her own parts strewn amid wreckage may lead to a sense of awe at death's power, or horror at life's fragility, either of which may be instructive in any number of ways.
We are God's chosen people.We are God's treasured possession.Let us rise in mighty strength to possess our rightful places as God's children.
Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane.
For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without regretting the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to power is not only just and right: it is the very gate of wisdom.
My borrowed power insists that negative situations, too, assist me on the path to greater becoming. It's never about the circumstance(s); these are surface level 'symptomatics'. How we deal with the energy it brings, however, is telling of how we choose to respond. There's no escaping Earth-School lessons. Embrace that it's still about your development, and not the illusion of fear's representative attempting to lead you astray. Be conscious and see free.
This is why it is so fundamental for us right now to grab hold of this idea of power and to democratize it. One of the things that is so profoundly exciting and challenging about this moment is that as a result of this power illiteracy that is so pervasive, there is a concentration of knowledge, of understanding, of clout. I mean, think about it: How does a friendship become a subsidy? Seamlessly, when a senior government official decides to leave government and become a lobbyist for a private interest and convert his or her relationships into capital for their new masters. How does a bias become a policy? Insidiously, just the way that stop-and-frisk, for instance, became over time a bureaucratic numbers game. How does a slogan become a movement? Virally, in the way that the Tea Party, for instance, was able to take the "Don't Tread on Me" flag from the American Revolution, or how, on the other side, a band of activists could take a magazine headline, "Occupy Wall Street," and turn that into a global meme and movement. The thing is, though, most people aren't looking for and don't want to see these realities. So much of this ignorance, this civic illiteracy, is willful. There are some millennials, for instance, who think the whole business is just sordid. They don't want to have anything to do with politics. They'd rather just opt out and engage in volunteerism. There are some techies out there who believe that the cure-all for any power imbalance or power abuse is simply more data, more transparency. There are some on the left who think power resides only with corporations, and some on the right who think power resides only with government, each side blinded by their selective outrage. There are the naive who believe that good things just happen and the cynical who believe that bad things just happen, the fortunate and unfortunate unlike who think that their lot is simply what they deserve rather than the eminently alterable result of a prior arrangement, an inherited allocation, of power.
Civic imagination and innovation and creativity are emerging from local ecosystems now and radiating outward, and this great innovation, this great wave of localism that's now arriving, and you see it in how people eat and work and share and buy and move and live their everyday lives, this isn't some precious parochialism, this isn't some retreat into insularity, no. This is emergent. The localism of our time is networked powerfully. And so, for instance, consider the ways that strategies for making cities more bike-friendly have spread so rapidly from Copenhagen to New York to Austin to Boston to Seattle. Think about how experiments in participatory budgeting, where everyday citizens get a chance to allocate and decide upon the allocation of city funds. Those experiments have spread from Porto Alegre, Brazil to here in New York City, to the wards of Chicago. Migrant workers from Rome to Los Angeles and many cities between are now organizing to stage strikes to remind the people who live in their cities what a day without immigrants would look like. In China, all across that country, members of the New Citizens' Movement are beginning to activate and organize to fight official corruption and graft, and they're drawing the ire of officials there, but they're also drawing the attention of anti-corruption activists all around the world. In Seattle, where I'm from, we've become part of a great global array of cities that are now working together bypassing government altogether, national government altogether, in order to try to meet the carbon reduction goals of the Kyoto Protocol. All of these citizens, united, are forming a web, a great archipelago of power that allows us to bypass brokenness and monopolies of control.
I’ve learned that you cannot be bitter and happy. You cannot be pitiful and powerful at the same time, you have to choose one of them. If you’ve had a lot of people that have hurt you, then you won’t help yourself by being bitter, resentful and pitiful about it. Forgiveness is freedom, and forgiveness is power.
I am suprised to a mad extent that people who claim to be intelligent and truth seeking go to church, hear their religious leaders say something, and without vetting it to a reasonable extent swallow it hook and all. Now the church has moved from speaking truth to power but has now aced her game by canvassing for politicians who have no business with God or his people. "by the use of simple propaganda even the most spiritual among us can be sold for the price of an orange," and the church is already falling into this snare. Without sentiments my prayers has been that God should raise us leaders who will futher his enterprise, leaders who will put God and the masses first. So it does not matter if it is Buhari or Jonathan, after all God used Cyrus who was a full blooded gentile(Isaiah 45 verses 1-8) to futher His cause. I strongly urge Nigerians to continue in their prayers for this Jerusalem. Left to some of our religious leaders they will even go the extent of helping God to decide who gets the votes. Let's not allow ourselves to be blinded by the curtains of religion and politics. And instead of using social media to spread bad blood and create feuds, let's encourage and spread the message of peace. Come the D day, we will go out there, vote (at least we have that right), and leave the rest to God. I am a Patriot
You are your abilities and they are you. I can't put it to you more plainly. Do you know why I hate this cure? It's a statement that what we are is inherently wrong. It's a punishment for something that isn't our fault - all because they can't control their fear about what we can do, anymore than they can control their resentment that there are people out there stronger and more powerful than they are. They want to strip you of yourself - your ability to protect and enforce your right to make decisions about your life. Your own body. Mark my words: in the end, it won't be a choice. They'll decide this for you.
Music is more powerful than reason in the soul. That is also why Plato made music the very first step in his long educational curriculum: good music was to create the harmony of soul that would be a ripe field for the higher harmony of reason to take root in later. And that is also why he said that the decay of the ideal state would begin with a decay in music. In fact, one of your obscure modern scholars has shown that social and political revolutions have usually been preceded by musical revolutions, and why another sage said, 'Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who writes its laws.
It lent a Man a certain peace of mind... to ride through threats and terrors unhearing: it even lent a man a certain real protection, for he could not hear temptation and bad advice to be swayed by it, but it was no protection at all when power reached out with tangible results and brought down the lightning.
Compassion is even more powerful than courage. Sure, with courage you can conquer a world - but only with compassion can you heal and build it.
There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on Earth."Eddie looked confused."People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless."This is the greatest gift God can give you: To understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.
Our emotions hold more power over us than blade or poison alike. To embrace freely the entire spectrum of our emotions is to allow a multitude of Trojan horses containing hidden emotional poisons to circumvent the walls of rationalization – walls we need to protect our trust, confidence, understanding, and self-control.
Why spend your life working on defense when no defense can be made truly impenetrable? Take the offensive – learn the vulnerabilities of the world around you and be the change you wish to see rather than living in constant fear of what may happen to you instead.
Many people in this country who want to see us the minority, and who don’t want to see us taking too militant or too uncompromising a stand, are absolutely against the successful regrouping or organising of any faction in this country whose thought and whose thinking pattern is international rather than national… There’s a world wide revolution going on, it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then, what power structure? An international Western power structure.
My power is everywhere propping up illusions, but I'm taking it back by letting go of them & just riding the stallion into wonderland. Let's see what you've got to say about the darkness in the mountains, I wonder if you know you can just turn it all to light. As we ride through the valley can you see the same water flowing that I do, or do dust clouds conceal it and block up your nose & throat? You're so thirsty for the end of the journey but I don't want you to miss the magic on the road.
Gaining satisfaction through accomplishments is and will always be a slippery slope, because there will come a time when you realize you have accomplished all that is within your power to accomplish in the realm of good, and will have nowhere else to turn but to the realms of greed and powerlust to find the satisfaction you crave.
Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orchestrate others toward the greater good.
As her body expanded so did her interior landscape. She imagined minarets, skyscrapers, entire cities being constructed inside her. Thighs thickened, belly became basketball-sized, buttocks deepened with dimples. Even her taste-buds shifted, and she held her tongue out for crushed ice, chalk, charcoal.
With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly onthe original Roman model is that it cannot allow true political parties to share in government. What then is a true political party: one that is based firmly in the interest of a class be it workers or fox hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumerism.
You are my loveMy source of joyYou are the joy You are the love Every chamber of your heart is like a flower, blooming and blooming Spreading love with the wind of thoughts I am floating in those divinely pure thoughts and feeling the happinessWhen I am in deep love, I gain the power of love, When I feel beloved, I feel divine happiness.
Lao Tzu's first paragraph in the book "Tao Te Ching" is that the Tao that can be told is not the absolute Tao.Lao Tzu has his own logic, the logic of paradoxes, the logic of life.To understand Tao, you will have to create eyes.Lao Tzu believes in the unity of opposites, because that is how life is.The Tao can be communicated, but it can only be communicated from heart to heart, from being to being, from love to love, from silence to silence.Truth is always realized in silence. In silence, the truth is realized.You reach to truth through silence.All spiritual books tries to say something that can not be said in the hope that a thirst, a longing, is created in your heart to know the truth.Tao is totality. Life exists through the tension of the opposites, the meeting of the opposites.Lao Tzu says that the opposite poles of life are not really opposites, but complementaries.Thinking is always of opposites. Lao Tzu says: drop the split attitude. Be simple.And when you are simple, you do not choose. Lao Tzu says: be choiceless, let life flow.Enjoy both poles in life, and then your life becomes a symphony of opposites.How to drop the mind: do not choose. If you do not choose, the mind drops.Live life as it comes - float. Float with life. Enjoy the moment in its totality,It is to live as part of the whole, to live as part of existence.If you become silent and empty, everything will come on it's own accord.When you live without any desire for power, position, fame or success, the whole existence pours down into your emptiness.
And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.
Agrarians are committed to preserving both communities and the material means of life, to cultivating practices that ensure that the essential means of life suffice for all members of the present generation and are not diminished for those who come after. Agrarianism in this sense is, and has nearly always been, a marginal culture existing at the edge or under the domination of a larger culture whose ideology, social system, and economy are fundamentally different. So agrarian writers, both ancient and modern, always speak with a vivid awareness of the threat posed by the culture of the powerful.
Taking risks, choosing growth, challenging ourselves, and asking for promotions (with smiles on our faces, of course) are all important elements of managing a career. One of my favorite quotes comes from author Alice Walker, who observed, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."Do not wait for power to be offered. Like that tiara, it might never materialize. And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?
The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend against, nor sword divide, nor poison infect. As such, we must aspire to create ideas, rather than preserve life. In a sense, this is how we achieve true immortality and live on past our time.
But in this case,” he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, “I feel that there is one cliché that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.“There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son mighthave fallen—or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up—for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality.”Plain speaking if you’re Henry James, perhaps.
Women, you have all this power, I’m telling you. In business, you have something called an inferred fiduciary duty to yourself. Look at the other hugely successful women in industry, commerce, science and everywhere else and you’ll see women who are feminine, beautiful but also do not rely on men for their self-empowerment.
The vanities of life:pleasure, possession, position and power.
You have the power to shape your life the way that you want it to be. Every thought, every word, every action guides you with a purpose. And that purpose is to fulfill your destiny. Some may say you're just a dreamer, but everything imagined begins with a dream.
There may be something going on in your life right now, that seems like a giant, so big that you think it's impossible to conquer. But, remember no matter how gigantic your problems may be, you have everything in you to overcome. You have the power to say to that mountain move, get out my way. Activate your faith, and watch it happen. The victory is yours!
When we choose to operate on the frequency of compassion and kindness, we create, and reinforce our own reality, as filled with compassion and kindness. I refer here to the idea of unconditional compassion and kindness. It means that we can choose to react to any situation, as negative as it may seem to be, with kindness and understanding. Whenever someone chooses to be rude to us, there is no need for us to respond with rudeness. A moment of self-reflection can remind us that fire fought with fire only increases the heat. The more often we practice our conscious positive response, to any situation, our automatic negative reactions are gradually being replaced with a conscious decision to act in the most loving way we can conceive at the moment.
It’s the process of being minimized, invalidated, silenced. It’s the process of being subjected to whatever someone else thinks I owe them. It’s the process of being used, examined, explored, and thrown away. It’s the process of being convinced to comply with the orders of someone who does not see me as their equal, someone who sees nothing wrong with the notion that I’m somehow lesser than they are. Rape isn’t about sex; it’s about all those other things. It’s about power.
His style as a writer places him in the category of the immortals, and his courage as a critic outlives the bitter battles in which he engaged. As a result, we use the word 'Orwellian' in two senses: The first describes a nightmare state, a dystopia of untrammelled power; the second describes the human qualities that are always ranged in resistance to such regimes, and that may be more potent and durable than we sometimes dare to think.
Lord may your grace and power be mighty upon us to fulfill our highest calling.
The car housed a hysterical bumper sticker: Save the Planet, and I permitted a moment of contemplation to truly bask in this thought. Save the planet? What a joke. Save the planet from what? From ourselves? And save it for what? For ourselves? It was a kind of perpetual stupidity in a tug-of-war battle over trivial matters. Only imbeciles see things in black and white: liberal or conservative, yes or no, this or that. Those in power laugh at those people in their morally inverted shades of grey, basking in the labels they've created so the people are easier to control.
It takes a lot of time, focus and energy to realize the enormity of being the ocean with your very own tide every month. However, by honoring the demands of bleeding, our blood gives something in return. The crazed bitch from irritation hell recedes. In her place arises a side of ourselves with whom we may not—at first—be comfortable. She is a vulnerable, highly perceptive genius who can ponder a given issue and take her world by storm. When we’re quiet and bleeding, we stumble upon the solutions to dilemmas that’ve been bugging us all month. Inspiration hits and moments of epiphany rumba ‘across de tundra of our senses. In this mode of existence one does not feel antipathy towards a bodily ritual so profoundly and routinely reinforces our cuntpower.
Never give up.This applies to more than goals and dreams, it is a maxim for basic daily struggles. It shapes one's life, including the will to continue to live. It supports love and committed relationships; it bolsters hope, faith, and charity; it is power in every area of existence. Never give up on anything or anyone of any worth, especially yourself.
Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience.
A moment of truth is very powerful. Instead of smiling to be polite, just frown. Instead of laughing when you are nervous or uncomfortable, just speak your truth. Instead of acting like everything is all right, proclaim it isn't alright, and talk about your feelings! Honor your truth. Honor yourself. Be real.
She understood now that while it had been wrong to kill Cansrel, it had also been right. The boy with the strange eyes had helped her to see the rightness of it. The boy who'd killed Archer. Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too terrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done.I forgive myself, though Fire. Today, I forgive myself.
It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model ofthinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist".
The chronicle of a man, the account of his life, his historiography, written as he lived out his life formed part of the rituals of his power. The disciplinary methods reversed this relation, lowered the threshold of describable individuality and made of this description a means of control and a method of domination.
They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with theircomrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful andhated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above.
The fact that the crime and the punishment were related and bound up in the form of atrocity was not the result of some obscurely accepted law of retaliation. It was the effect, in the rites of punishment, of a certain mechanism of power: of a power that not only did not hesitate to exert itself directly on bodies, but was exalted and strengthened by its visible manifestations; of a power that asserted itself as an armed power whose functions of maintaining order were not entirely unconnected with the functions of war; of a power that presented rules and obligations as personal bonds, a breach of which constituted an offence and called for vengeance; of a power for which disobedience was an act of hostility, the first sign of rebellion, which is not in principle different from civil war; of a power that had to demonstrate not why it enforced its laws, but who were its enemies, and what unleashing of force threatened them; of a power which, in the absence of continual supervision, sought a renewal of its effect in the spectacle of its individual manifestations; of a power that was recharged in the ritual display of its reality as 'super-power'.
You invoke a new futurewhen you envision your pastin the light of your present.
One walks along a street and strays unknowingly from one's path; one then looks up and suddenly for those familiar landmarks of orientation, and, seeing none, one feels lost. Panic drapes the look of the world in a strangeness, and the more one stares blankly at the world, the stranger it looks, the more hideously frightening it seems. There is then born in one a wild, hot wish to project out upon the alien world the world that one is seeking. This wish is a hunger for power, to be in command of one's self.
Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas maybe we do so because those ideas are true... written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us... vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth us not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called... re-membered... re-cognized... as that which is already inside us.
When the power of breath (Sa) is controlled it becomes rested (as) and in thatstate it transforms into protector(tra); this is the basic principle of life andconsciousness, wherein the senses, mind, intelligence all are protected anddirected through the power of breath in a rested state, this is called Sa+as+tra (SASTRA). It is the most powerful weapon alive and the most powerfulprotector as well. One who stills, directs, controls and allows it to rise fromthe core of the body to the subtle, subtler, subtlest levels of consciousness isconsidered to be well versed in Sastras. Ananth Yoga allows one to work onthe Grossest, Gross, Subtle, Subtler levels of consciousness, through thebreath power leading on to connect to the subtlest level of consciousness.
These are the attributes of Bullshit people; they will...blur your imagination, take your endowments for a piece of debris, make you ridiculous, and most importantly, you got to send them to the recycle bin.
The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.
A man needs to feel powerful and respected. Innately within us, as far back as we can remember, we have taught ourselves to grand stand in our abilities to be tough, to conquer, to impress and to win in all aspects of our lives in order to be validated by others and in doing so we have built our conceptual house of self on the sand of societal opinion. Yet, ironically, it’s only when a man finds his true strength in humility, in its purest sense, will he ever experience what genuine power and respect feels like. The man who builds his conceptual house of self on the rock of unpretentious decorum simply needs no validation outside of his creator. He is who he is…and for all intense and purposes that is the only respectable power any man should ever seek.
Can I tell you a boring science fact?" she whispered. "I bet you didn't learn it in Shadowhunter history class.""If you're trying to distract me from talking about my feelings, you're not being very subtle about it." He touched her face. "You know I make speeches. It's okay. You don't have to make them back. Just tell me you love me,""I'm not trying to distract you." She held up her hand and wiggles the fingers. "There are a hundred trillion cells in the human body," she said. "And every single one of the cells of my body loves you. We shed cells, and grow new ones, and my new cells love you more than the old ones, which is why I love you more every day than I did before. It's science. And when I die and they burn my body and I become ashes that mix with the air, and part of the ground and the trees and the stars, everyone who breathes air of sees the flowers that grow out of the ground or looks up at the stars will remember you and love you, because I love you that much," She smiled. "How was that for a speech?
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. ...Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. ...Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason for fighting. Because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons rapidly developed by servile scientists will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you into pieces.
It’s funny, how for an entire lifetime we keep thinking ‘How’ will our life-partner look like, how will he be? How will he react to a particular situation? How will he get angry, and how will we love and pamper him? We have so many questions like if he will accept me the way I am? Or if I have to change for him? We all have made plans for our future, subconsciously. We don’t exactly plan out everything with a pen and paper, it’s something that happens automatically, just like an involuntary action. Whenever we are alone and our mood is good, we usually think about our life with our partner. The days and nights in his arms, and the time that we will reserve for him.But when all that turns into reality, it’s strikingly different. Everything that you thought, seems to be a joke, and life laughs at you from a distance! You are helpless and can’t do anything about it, but have to accept it the way it is. You are totally caught into a web of dilemmas and problems before you realize that this is the time you waited for, and that this is the time you dreamt about! You have to make efforts, compromises, sacrifices and you have to change yourselves too sometimes to make things work.You can never expect to get a partner exactly the way you thought or dreamt about. It’s always different in reality and it’s always tough to make both ends meet for a relationship to work, but you have to! It’s your relationship, if you won’t work for it, who else will?
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more.
I am a lawyer, and for me it is very sad to say that there is now law here. There are weapons rather than law. What did Mao say? Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. It's very true. The situation is decadent. A lot of Serbs think this is leading us nowhere but they feel powerless. How many disagree? I don't know. Perhaps thirty percent disagree, but most of them are frightened and quiet. Perhaps sixty percent agree or are confused enough to go along. They are led by the ten percent who have the guns and who have control of the television towers. That's all they need.'p. 107
And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.
You want to know who the strongest man in the Kabuki District is? You must be new in town. You won't last long with that attitude. Forget it. This town is on a whole different level. You got thugs, brawlers, vigilantes and rogue warriors from all over Edo here. It's like a haven for hooligans. This is for your own good. Have a drink and go back to the countryside. What's that? You want me to tell you about the top dogs before you go? You really like this stuff. First, there are four monsters on a level of their own: The Fierce and Divine Madamoiselle Saigo, Doromizu Jirocho the Gallant, Peacock Princess Kada and Empress Otose. The four factions are in a standoff which preserves a fragile balance of power. Who would be the strongest in a fight? You wouldn't be able to even scratch those beasts. Saigo and Jirocho in particular, were heroes during the Joui War. Well, they're too old to go on a tear now. If you want someone who's currently active, there's Katsuro Kuroguma, a young leader in the Doromizu Faction. He's the most feared man in Kabuki District right now. You'll also find a few former Joui in Saigo's Faction. There are rumours about Kada's Faction having ties to some crazy folk. Otose's Faction? It's just a bar, really. She's just an old lady with a soft heart. But if you try any funny business on her turf, you'll run into a certain guy. A guy who holds his own against the Big Three by himself. One hell of a monster, with hair that's completely white. A demon...
By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.
By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good.
Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents the strongest possible threat. The feelings of admiration and of ecstasy induced by them thus mean that we are concerned to admire them from afar. The sun corresponds to that prudent concern. It is all radiance gigantic loss of heat and light, flame, explosion; but remote from men, who can enjoy in safety and quiet the fruits of this cataclysm. To earth belongs the solidity which sustains houses of stone and the steps of men (at least on its surface, for buried within the depths of the earth is the incandescence of lava).
After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.
A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.
It is supposed that power corrupts,' the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. "yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.
You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.
They were way more interested in learning the alphabet or whatever than they were in learning how to rip a moose in half with their bare hands. Then make a helmet out of its skull. Then to use that helmet to help kill more moose. Collect the skull helmets. Combine. Assemble. Super moose skull helmet. Infinite power.
democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one’s self.
I had cooperated. I could not have refused. I was smitten with her, half in love but also afraid, because in my life (and she seemed to know this) I had not loved anyone without having been wounded. Love was power and possession, love caused pain: you were never more exposed than when you were in love, never more wounded; possession was an enslavement, something stifling.
Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.
Now, sorcery rules the world. Of course, most don't call it sorcery; indeed, many would be horrified by such a notion. Instead, they use words like ideology, politics, defence, security, patriotism, commerce, industry, marketing, consumerism and belief. But where there is power-seeking, especially power over others or for oneself, though also over oneself, and be it wittingly or unwittingly conjured up, make no mistake: there is sorcery afoot. It just comes in different shades and colours, that's all.
Once she wasn't supposed to like it. To have her in a position she didn't like, that was power. Even if she liked it she had to pretend she didn't. Then she was supposed to like it. To make her do something she didn't like and then make her like it, that was greater power. The greatest power of all is when she doesn't really like it but she's supposed to like it, so she has to pretend.
There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.
In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive, for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will bend to his own will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even sensible people. In this, mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of millions of people.
Power is meant to be shared with the goal of empowering others. Hoarded power weakens others and exalts oneself. Power, when grounded in biblical values, serves others by liberating them. It acknowledges that people bear the image of God and treats them in a way that will nurture the development of that image. In so doing, we honor their Creator.
Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s namecut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifierand the signified. Or better yet explain to the girlwho watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitchedthe word for her father’s name (on earth as in heaven)across her back that words aren’t made of flesh and blood,that they don’t bite the skin. Language is the animalwe’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It’s whywhen the boy hears his father yelling at the doorhe sends the dog that he’s kept hungry, that he’s kicked,then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every wordhas a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts.
Well then, take this thought with you for the dark hours to come: It is a ludicrous fiction that love conquers all, but it can, in fact, conquer quite a lot. I am Iason of the Blood, Knight of Arthur, King of the Britons, reborn into dark service in the year of Our Lord five hundred and sixty. My power is vast, and for none to arrogate but by my will and decree. My services are engaged, Selina. Tell me what you need to ease your pain in this, and it is yours.
Every command consists of momentum and sting. The momentum forces the recipient to act, and to act in accordance with the content of the command; the sting remains behind in him. When a command functions normally and as one expects, there is nothing to be seen of the sting; it is hidden and unsuspected and may only reveal its existence by some faint, scarcely perceptible recalcitrance before the command obeyed.
The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination and violence. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do no translate into wimpiness. When men -- or women, for that matter -- begin to unleash what is untamed in us, we need to remember that the first images and impulses we encounter will often be the stereotyped paths of power we have learned in a culture of domination. To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper.
Repose is the most expansive posture you can assume. When you are in Repose, your body is as open and extended as it can be. If the power of a pose is determined by how large it makes your body feel and appear, then Repose should be viewed as the ultimate high-power pose.
Women have participated in almost every fight for freedom. They were there when civilians were targeted they were there when the bombs were planted. To argue they didn't have enough power to speak up or they had been brainwashed by their male colleagues is to try to disassociate from the darkness that resides in everyone. And to disassociate from your darkness is to lose your power over it.
But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power.Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger.
He saw clearly, immediately, that the man didn't care about the gift's value, didn't care about the gift even, but cared profoundly for the act of receiving as though the gift were a tribute, a confirmation of his self, his being, his reality. He found no pleasure in what he was taking but in the act of taking itself.
There is no position so critical, no office so important, that the occasional, and even the more than occasional, utter incompetent will not wind up filling it. Heart surgeons, popes, presidents, it makes no difference. Look around and you will see an existence replete with people who are betraying, in a most egregious manner, the powers and responsibilities that have been entrusted to them.
The power paradox is this: we rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst. We gain a capacity to make a difference in the world by enhancing the lives of others, but the very experience of having power and privilege leads us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths. How we handle the power paradox guides our personal and work lives and determines, ultimately, how happy we and the people we care about will be. It determines our empathy, generosity, civility, innovation, intellectual rigor, and the collaborative strength of our communities and social networks. Its ripple effects shape the patterns that make up our families, neighborhoods, and workplaces, as well as the broader patterns of social organization that define societies and our current political struggles.
That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet for power and aggression; no stuff about their being enjoyable as such. You played a game to demonstrate that you did it better than someone else. If it came to that, I thought how few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.
I have never been able to understand how men can feel affection for individuals who are intent on massacring them in a variety of unpleasant ways, but it is an undeniable fact that they can and do. Witness the immortal verse of Mr. Kipling: "So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'home in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man!" One can only accept this as another example of the peculiar emotional aberrations of the male sex.
To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: "For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease." In chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man.
We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something . . . because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.
Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann’s phrase, to be ‘organisationally outflanked
In a healthy relationship, vulnerability is wonderful. It leads to increased intimacy and closer bonds. When a healthy person realizes that he or she hurt you, they feel remorse and they make amends. It’s safe to be honest. In an abusive system, vulnerability is dangerous. It’s considered a weakness, which acts as an invitation for more mistreatment. Abusive people feel a surge of power when they discover a weakness. They exploit it, using it to gain more power. Crying or complaining confirms that they’ve poked you in the right spot.
Some people," Aunt Emily answered sharply, "are so busy seeing all sides of every issue that they neutralize concern and prevent necessary action. There's no strength in seeing all sides unless you can act where real measurable injustice exists. A lot of academic talk just immobilizes the oppressed and maintains oppressors in their positions of power.
There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly.
My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.
My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all the away. He power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am the one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.
Superior, do you understand me? These are white people. They are not like you, or me or us. They have the power to hurt you ... and sometimes it's fun to them when they do. Their power is not because they are smart ... it's because ... something happened sometime ... started somewhere and they got on top of the world. They got the power. The only power you got is to learn to live with them, learn to read their minds ... til you can do better. They don't treat each other right ... so don't you look to be treated right. You hear me? Sometimes there's good white people ... but don't you act like that til you know that.
Power breeds resentment and withers the slow-growing plant that is trust, and people who use it to capture others not only fail to make friends but often end up captives themselves. And perhaps what is sadder still is that when you control other people you take away all that there might be in a real encounter with them and replace it with your fears. And while you might get gratitude for a while, or guilt and tears, you won't get what they had to offer if you'd let them give you what was really in their hearts.
Our culture, so proud of its mind-over-matter philosophy, cuts us off from our bodily experience and from the earth itself. In this severance, our sexuality is negated, our senses assaulted, our environment abused, and our power manipulated. Our ground is our form, and without it we lose our individuality.
In general the power drive is given free rein when it can appear under the cloak of objective and moral rectitude. People are the most cruel when they can use cruelty to enforce the "good."In daily life we often suffer pages of conscience when we permit ourselves to be excessively motivated by the power drive. But these guilt feelings completely disappear from consciousness when our actions, while unconsciously motivated by a lust for power, can be consciously justified by that which is allegedly right and good.
I have heard the predictable slew of insults, threats, epithets, and curses. Underneath all these, I hear their fear. They don’t want to hurt me, though I may serve as a stand-in for a man who they do want to hurt. They want to scare me because fear is the only way they have learned to feel powerful.
Maybe we can help. Where are you from? I've never seen you around here before. And, how did you get that cut? Where are you staying?” He shook his head and giggled. “Are you the police? You ask a lot of questions Phoenix.” “No. I just ... never mind.” I wanted to know more about him. The way those sparkly green eyes gazed at me. The way his dimples sunk deep into his cheeks, as he smiled and said my name with his deep voice.
In our hearts we know that with a different fate, we, too, could be in the ranks of the dispossessed, stripped of our identities and belonging nowhere. The refugee becomes a sinister symbol of what can quickly happen once personhood is denied and people are transformed into disposable units of contemptible impediments to the greed or power-mongering of others.
There is no greater power and support you can give someone than to look them in the eye, and with sincerity/conviction say, 'I believe in you.
When I was researching the book Toxic Electricity, I would see biological reactions for up to a week afterwards. They are typically strong in the first day or two after the electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures and tail off as the week goes on. I would feel fine during the EMF exposures and start seeing weird health effects usually during sleep that night. Extended time around high voltage power lines & power poles were the worst for provoking reactions, followed by wifi and transmitting utility meters.
In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.
Sometimes it's like: If something terrifies you, you should totally do it BECAUSE it terrifies you. And then you'll do it and you'll realise what you're capable of.
I submit respectfully to the House as a general principle that our responsibility in this matter is directly proportionate to our power. Where there is great power there is great responsibility, where there is less power there is less responsibility, and where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending. How long I can contain the storm I am becoming; the emotions pushed aside that grow and strengthen, clamoring for their release. I can resist only so much. One day I won’t be able to fake a smile or weave a lie. One day I am going to explode.
[P]ower, terrible, unprecedented power, and with it came the unavoidable choice that had faced every power-junkie since time began: to have the sheer gall to fake being something greater than a man, or cop-out on the millions who had poured a part of themselves into your image and be something less.
Another basic characteristic of liberalism which constitutes a formidable obstacle to an oppressed group's liberation is its conception of human nature. If selfishness, aggressiveness, the drive to conquer and dominate, really are among defining human traits, as every liberal philosopher since Locke tries to convince us, the oppression in civil society—i.e. in the social sphere not regulated by the state—is a fact of life, and the basic civil relationship between a man and a women will always remain a battlefield. Woman, being less aggressive, is then either the less human of the two and doomed to subjugation, or else she must get more power-hungry herself and try to dominate man. Liberation for both is not feasible.
In the age of arms, a super warhead might be the most powerful for its destructiveness. In the age of farms, an irrigation system is most powerful, for it feeds lives. But how do you define power and advancement in the age of social engineering? It is the one that mimics human the best, isn’t it? We don’t need a warhead when there has been a drought. We don’t point at our enemy with sprinklers. It is about evolving. (Douglas Parsley)
The Devil is a master of disguise and takes on many forms. He comes to conquer you, steal your joy, kill your spirit, and destroy your faith. When you are doing right, he attacks you from the left but know that God is all powerful and God is in you and that no weapon formed against you shall prosper.
A man who wants to gain power over a woman must follow the example of women and condition his sex drive. If he succeeds in becoming as cold as she, she can no longer bait him with sex into the role of provider. At most she could offer herself as an equal sex partner, as dependent on him as he is on her. If men could abstain from sex at judicious intervals they might even succeed in normalizing the female sex drive - even make women desire them more than the other way around.
Our ways of seeing are democratic. Unfortunately, they are not bureaucratic. Except in rare circumstances, I no longer believe that it is possible to be both, because when it becomes bureaucratic the struggle is not about pedagogy, it's about power. About who controls the activities that occur in schools. About who controls who participates in American society. About who controls the power base of the twenty-first century.
Power consists in making oneself the goal of another person's social instincts, without seeking to satisfy one's own social instincts through him. The other then does everything one asks. Powerlessness consists in wanting or having to satisfy one's social instincts through another person whose social instincts one has not succeeded in concentrating on oneself - one then does everything the other asks.
[T]here cannot be a more certain symptom of the approaching ruin of a State than when a firm adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit, and all the qualifications requisite to a right discharge of every employment, are reduced to that single standard.
People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.
In Zen, there is an old saying: The obstacle is the path. Know that a whole and happy life is not free of obstacles. Quite the contrary, a whole and happy life is riddled with obstacles-they simply become the very stepping-stones that help lift us to a new perspective. It is not what happens to us in this life that shapes us, it is how we choose to respond to what happens to us.
Isn't there a flaw in the logic of that phrase - speak truth to power? It assumes that power doesn't know the truth. But power knows the truth just as well, if not better, than the powerless know the truth. Enron knows what it's doing. We don't have to tell it what it's doing. We have to tell other people what Enron is doing. Similarly, the people who are building the dams know what they're doing. The contractors know how much they're stealing. The bureaucrats know how much they're getting in bribes.Power knows the truth. There isn't any doubt about that. It is really about telling the story. Good fiction is the truest thing that ever there was. Facts are not necessarily the only truths. Facts can be fiddled with by economists and bankers. There are other kinds of truth. It's about telling the story. As a writer, that's the best thing I can do. It's not just about digging up facts.
With the sort of power these new processes granted them, the members of the brotherhood were in the perfect position to seize power. In any other country, a massive, bloody war would have ensued. Horrors would have stalked the land, unholy amalgamations of flesh would have fought on the fields, and the nights would have new, unspeakable terrors.Fortunately, this is Belgium we're talking about.
Powerlessness implies inactivity, like an appliance that is not plugged into its electrical current. Empowerment is about plugging into responsible choices and then acting upon them to your fullest capacity.
Don't you see? You created this forest! It is your imagination that has given these trees the water to grow. It is your hopes that blazed a path through it. It is your dreams that give it the magic. All of this was created from within you!
American schools in Guam, both before 1941 and after 1945, were established to eradicate the Chamoru, tongue and person. To educate the old Chamoru out of the new American. The native out of the patriot...But the nastier lesson their schools taught was that their dreams were ours. That indigenous knowledge had no place in the new world...As vehicles for our assimilation, American schools have attached to our longings alien aspirations for material wealth, money and power. How much of our creativity and our vision has already been laid to waste for the sake of these?
All causes are good,' Yallin told her calmly. 'And those exact same causes are all bad, depending on which side a body's on. Regent Pettibone and his followers certainly thought your mother's cause was a bad one. To my mind, causes aren't about good or bad, in the end. They're about power. That's what makes them so dangerous.
In all honesty, I don’t envy you the possession of this power over memory, nor do I admire you. Because humans are usually completely unconcerned with the memories of other creatures. Human existence involves the willful destruction of the existential memories of other creatures and of your own memories as well. No life can survive without other lives, with the ecological memories of other living creatures have, memories of the environments in which the live. People don’t realize they need to rely on the memories of other organisms to survive. You think that flowers bloom in colorful profusion just to please your eyes. That a wild boar exists just to provide meat for your table. That a fish takes the bait just for you sake. That only you can mourn. That a stone falling into a gorge is of no significance. That a sambar deer, its head bent low to sip at a creek is not a revelation . . . When in fact the finest movement of any organism represents a change in an ecosystem.” The man with the compound eyes takes a deep sign and says: “But if you were any different you wouldn’t be human.
At a time when we need an urgent national conversation about how schools and curriculum should address the environmental crisis, we're being told that the problems we need to focus on are teacher incompetence, government monopoly, and market competition. The reform agenda reflects the same private interests that are moving to shrink public space-interests that have no desire to raise questions that might encourage students to think critically about the roots of the environmental crisis, or to examine society's unsustainable distribution of wealth and power.
If I could make people feel, just for a day or an hour, what it’s like to love with infiniteness, then they would be animals no longer, but some greater creature, deserving of that title human. I’ve bettered a day though. On earth, they will have it thus: from birth to unavoidable death, a man is pumped so full of love that his eyes bleed rainbows and his mouth a barrel of miracles. His hands will heal then make monuments to commemorate it; they’ll press tight and pray for no man, no god but himself; and his mind… his mind will shower like spring rains. He will steal away from the shadow of ambition. He’ll be his own sun and light up the world with new marvels – be they art, philosophies, science – and in his brightness put the mundane, not himself, in shadows, and how rightfully. Each a captain and a maker, a mark-setter and stealer of shows... Earth’s skies will clap with the thunder of our majesty, not with violence, doubt, confusion, futility, and monotony; anything – anything – but the dull drone of duplication and robo-behaviour.
I am inclined to trust you. You shouldn’t be like that with another man, not ever; but I can’t help it. I felt it strongly from the instant I heard your voice; and though I thought momentarily that it would falter, it didn’t. It’s still here. You see, the essence of trust is not knowing a person’s motive; it’s knowing what isn’t. It’s a simple process of trial and error that gets you to the heart of a man; and once that soft voice and those light feet of yours got to moving I saw in you no measure of ill intent.
The more powerful the powerful appear the more invisible they become, said Armando. This used to work differently than now. In the old days it was said that the powerful merged with the divine and the divine was all that one saw. But now the powerful have merged with the shadow, really with death, and when you encounter them they are really hard to see.
How would it alter Juliet’s love perception to learn the sea is but a rounded jug of water? Would her sensuous analogy turned simple simile unveil to her the limits of herself? Or would she forget the ocean, that deplorable casket, and turn on the true bottomless tumbler, the only running tap: the sky? It may have lost the title ‘heavens’ when its gods were dethroned, but its infinity reigns. So long as you walk, it reigns. So long as I talk and you listen, there’s a voice and ears to keep it active, moving, and reason to say: look! infinity lives. And when we and the other consciousnesses pass, though it in part dies with us, still it reigns. It will, in a sense, plod on, like a lifeless coffin through its own space, sails set for nothing, unstoppable when trailing its fabric.
Many, if not most, of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can, in fact, be directly connected to the earlier miracle of the Creation. The same Being who, as Jehovah, organized the elements and framed the heavens and the earth was thus, as the Man of Galilee, able to control the winds and the waves. He could change water to wine, multiply loaves and fishes, heal bodies, and restore sight by the same power...that he had exercised in the beginning.
Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. "So why won't the radio play?""I don't know," he said. "Try connecting them here."He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled "AC," and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance."Keep pedaling," he said. "That's it, just keep pedaling.""Hey, I want to dance, too.""You'll have to wait your turn."Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later.After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, "What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance?
When our will is strong and aligned with Divine intent, there is nothing we cannot do or be. With power and guidance flowing through us, Life becomes an effortless dance as we relinquish control and limitation and allow our Spirit Within to express itself.
Students didn't much like those who verbally or physically beat the crap out of them. But when researchers began measuring aggression alongside perceived popularity, they found an undeniably strong link. Recent studies conclude that aggressive behaviors are now often associated with high social status. Psychologists no longer view aggression as a last-resort tactic of social misfits. Now they see aggression as a means toward social success. (This does not, however, mean it is admired.)
The wyvern swooped, but it was not to rend and tear but rather to bank and stare with one curious beady eye at the bodies of the minds that had touched hers in a way that no human had dared to do for hundreds of years. Such a slender and delicate creature, the wyvern thought, and so young, only a child in her reckoning, and yet with so much power.
They’ve kept the truth about Persephone a secret,burying it deep below Hercules’s murdered wifeand all of Zeus’s affairs.It’s dangerous, you see, a spark threatening to ignite a long dead flame.Power.She loved her power,the Queen of the Dead,to forever reign in the fires of hell. She wore her crown like a beacon;a beautiful queen,plotting against her king.They never wanted youto know the hunger of Persephone,how she starved for something other than pomegranates.Control.The primal thirst that burns all women’s throats,denied by eons of men.Listen closely to the voice from hell, sweetheart. “You are a queen;don’t wait for a king.
Rebuild your world, rebuild your race, rebuild your empire. Rebuild it all. But make sure you rebuild your ideals too. Rebuild the principles that made you a great and honorable galactic power in the first place. Don't prey on the weak. Don't steal from the helpless. Don't murder the innocent. Be a force for good, not a force for yourself.
Is power like the vis viva and the quantite d’avancement? That is, is it conserved by the universe, or is it like shares of a stock, which may have great value one day, and be worthless the next? If power is like stock shares, then it follows that the immense sum thereof lately lost by B[olingbroke] has vanished like shadows in sunlight. For no matter how much wealth is lost in stock crashes, it never seems to turn up, but if power is conserved, then B’s must have gone somewhere. Where is it? Some say ‘twas scooped up by my Lord R, who hid it under a rock, lest my Lord M come from across the sea and snatch it away. My friends among the Whigs say that any power lost by a Tory is infallibly and insensibly distributed among all the people, but no matter how assiduously I search the lower rooms of the clink for B’s lost power, I cannot seem to find any there, which explodes that argument, for there are assuredly very many people in those dark salons. I propose a novel theory of power, which is inspired by . . . the engine for raising water by fire. As a mill makes flour, a loom makes cloth and a forge makes steel, so we are assured this engine shall make power. If the backers of this device speak truly, and I have no reason to deprecate their honesty, it proves that power is not a conserved quantity, for of such quantities, it is never possible to make more. The amount of power in the world, it follows, is ever increasing, and the rate of increase grows ever faster as more of these engines are built. A man who hordes power is therefore like a miser who sits on a heap of coins in a realm where the currency is being continually debased by the production of more coins than the market can bear. So that what was a great fortune, when first he raked it together, insensibly becomes a slag heap, and is found to be devoid of value. When at last he takes it to the marketplace to be spent. Thus my Lord B and his vaunted power hoard what is true of him is likely to be true of his lackeys, particularly his most base and slavish followers such as Mr. Charles White. This varmint has asserted that he owns me. He fancies that to own a man is to have power, yet he has got nothing by claiming to own me, while I who was supposed to be rendered powerless, am now writing for a Grub Street newspaper that is being perused by you, esteemed reader.
We live in an age fit for heroes. No time has ever offered such perils or prizes. Man can provide a full life for humanity – or he can destroy himself with the problems he has created. The test of this century will be whether man confuses the growth of wealth and power with the growth of spirit and character.…
Be thankful for your achievements; be thankful for your accomplishments, no matter how big or small. Be thankful for the mind to complete the accomplishments. Be thankful for your past, present, and future. And know that if you are creating success stories you will find that average is how you began, above average is then where you will stand! Lest you forget the strong develop and improve; the weak get frantic, digress and deviate.
..be able and willing to action regardless of all trauma, all the No’s, and non-supporters one could headache and pain on.
We all have a little entrepreneur inside of us. Wanting to leverage it is what gives us an entrepreneurial spirit and an entrepreneurial mind. Actually doing it makes one an entrepreneur.
if you are not a fan of great consumer service, then you are not a fan of business ultimately not making you a fan of money.
Pick the paper off the floor, throw it in the trash, study—even if you think you already know the subject, say thank you for an act of kindness, and be the support you want to receive. You want to become a master of the mundane, making it easier to be a sorcerer of success.
My dearest friend Abigail, These probably could be the last words I write to you and I may not live long enough to see your response but I truly have lived long enough to live forever in the hearts of my friends. I thought a lot about what I should write to you. I thought of giving you blessings and wishes for things of great value to happen to you in future; I thought of appreciating you for being the way you are; I thought to give sweet and lovely compliments for everything about you; I thought to write something in praise of your poems and prose; and I thought of extending my gratitude for being one of the very few sincerest friends I have ever had. But that is what all friends do and they only qualify to remain as a part of the bunch of our loosely connected memories and that's not what I can choose to be, I cannot choose to be lost somewhere in your memories. So I thought of something through which I hope you will remember me for a very long time. I decided to share some part of my story, of what led me here, the part we both have had in common. A past, which changed us and our perception of the world. A past, which shaped our future into an unknown yet exciting opportunity to revisit the lost thoughts and to break free from the libido of our lost dreams. A past, which questioned our whole past. My dear, when the moment of my past struck me, in its highest demonised form, I felt dead, like a dead-man walking in flesh without a soul, who had no reason to live any more. I no longer saw any meaning of life but then I saw no reason to die as well. I travelled to far away lands, running away from friends, family and everyone else and I confined myself to my thoughts, to my feelings and to myself. Hours, days, weeks and months passed and I waited for a moment of magic to happen, a turn of destiny, but nothing happened, nothing ever happens. I waited and I counted each moment of it, thinking about every moment of my life, the good and the bad ones. I then saw how powerful yet weak, bright yet dark, beautiful yet ugly, joyous yet grievous; is a one single moment. One moment makes the difference. Just a one moment. Such appears to be the extreme and undisputed power of a single moment. We live in a world of appearance, Abigail, where the reality lies beyond the appearances, and this is also only what appears to be such powerful when in actuality it is not. I realised that the power of the moment is not in the moment itself. The power, actually, is in us. Every single one of us has the power to make and shape our own moments. It is us who by feeling joyful, celebrate for a moment of success; and it is also us who by feeling saddened, cry and mourn over our losses. I, with all my heart and mind, now embrace this power which lies within us. I wish life offers you more time to make use of this power. Remember, we are our own griefs, my dear, we are our own happinesses and we are our own remedies.Take care!Love,Francis.Title: Letter to AbigailScene: "Death-bed"Chapter: The Road To Awe
Every deal can be closed. Every prospect can become a buyer. Every no can turn into a yes. In any market. In any economy. There is always an angle. There is always another attempt. There is no law against how much you can prospect, or how many times you can try to close a deal. There are more than enough ideas and millions of resources and billions of people out there to make any dream that you want, a reality. The only mental chain that will ever imprison you in a life of scarcity, is a belief that there is not enough, or that there is not a way to make what you want possible. This chapter is going to awaken and stir up a monster of influence and achievement inside you. This monster works by being totally aware of all the resources that you have at your disposal, and not being afraid to any means to influence. ”Excerpt From: “Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One - Chapter: Gun To Your Head
Jesus’ incarnation and ministry thus present us with the final critique of strategic religion; on the cross, where we see God almost deliberately ‘lose’ – as if duped into being strung up by a scheming, fearful group of clerics – we see the end of power games. God will not play. I sincerely believe that if the Church allows itself to be tied up in strategies, into ‘winning’ people for Christ, it will end inexorably moving towards power-politics, towards support for wars, and away from genuine concern for the ‘other’.
Your level of audacity affects how well they perceive your idea. Audacity in asking means that you ask for what you actually want. When you are in the heat of the conversation, and things are getting real, and the yes and no affects your bank account, you will sometimes feel a temptation to be safe, rather than... sorry. What a bullshit phrase, by the way. I’d rather die in the pursuit of my peak potential, than live forever in a mediocre, average way.”Excerpt From: “Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One.
Escape from reality. In some instances, dissociation induces people to imagine that they have some kind of mastery over intractable environmental difficulties. Dissociation is often implicated in magical thinking or self-induced trance states. This aspect of dissociation is frequently found in abuse survivors. It is not uncommon for abused children to engage in magical thinking to retain an illusion of control over the situation (e.g., believing that they "cause" the perpetrator to act out).
Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other.In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused.In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control.
Some people believe that it isn’t so much power that is exchanged in TPE, as it is authority. The intrinsic difference between power and authority can best be explained thusly: If we were talking about a car, then power would be what was under the hood. Exercising that power would mean taking the car out for a spin. Having the authority to do so might involve a driver’s license, possessing the keys, or having the title and registration.
Resistance is a simple concept: power, unjust and immoral, is confronted and dismantled. The powerful are denied their right to hurt the less powerful. Domination is replaced by equity in a shift or substitution of institutions. That shift eventually forms new human relationships, both personally and across society.
For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the 'natives,' and so in every crisis he has got to do what the 'natives' expect of him... A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things.
The principle victims of British policies are Unpeople—those whose lives are deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain. They are the modern equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation.
Just let go of the oars. Whenyou‘re no longer paddling against the Current, when you release your oars and relax into your ownnatural Well-Being, the Current, which is ever moving in the direction of that which you havebecome and all that you want, will carry you toward your desires.
All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.
You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other men. They cannot be men of ambition and action in society and so develop a capacity for friendship rather than for efficiency. They are indeed weak and easily influenced, because they confidently give themselves to others; they are simple certainly, but often with a very attractive simplicity. Their first reaction is often one of welcome and not of rejection or criticism. Full of trust, they commit themselves deeply. Who amongst us has not been moved when met by the warm welcome of our boys and girls, by their smiles, their confidence and their outstretched arms. Free from the bonds of conventional society, and of ambition, they are free, not with the ambitious freedom of reason, but with an interior freedom, that of friendship. Who has not been struck by the rightness of their judgments upon the goodness or evil of men, by their profound intuition on certain human truths, by the truth and simplicity of their nature which seeks not so much to appear to be, as to be. Living in a society where simplicity has been submerged by criticism and sometimes by hypocrisy, is it not comforting to find people who can be aware, who can marvel? Their open natures are made for communion and love.
I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse.
This capacity for living easily and familiarly at an extraordinary level of abstraction is the source of modern man's power. With it he has transformed the planet, annihilated space, and trebled the world's population. But it is also a power which has, like everything human, its negative side, in the desolating sense of rootlessness, vacuity, and the lack of concrete feeling that assails modern man in his moments of real anxiety.
I suppose...my experience with organized faith of any stripe is somewhat stilted," Baisyl admitted. 'As far as my eyes have seen, it's a conglomeration of power-hungry men who self-appoint themselves the sole dictators of how others should live their lives in order to best please forces far beyond their control..
For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked watching and being with someone who enjoyed life as much as Sylvia seemed to enjoy it. She squeezed all the juice from the orange, or, to change the figure, drained the cup to the leaves, the very dregs.
I wonder what could happen if self-confessed followers of Jesus surrendered our human powers, and our desires for power, and began to celebrate openly our human weakness in exchange for the experience of Christ as Power within us. What could happen if, for Christ's sake, we openly delighted in our weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties?
Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything - that's part of how you teach people they can't do anything, they're helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.
Father-daughter incest is not only the type of incest most frequently reported but also represents a paradigm of female sexual victimization. The relationship between father and daughter, adult male and female child, is one of the most unequal relationships imaginable. It is no accident that incest occurs most often precisely in the relationship where the female is most powerless. The actual sexual encounter may be brutal or tender, painful or pleasurable; but it is always, inevitably, destructive to the child. The father, in effect, forces the daughter to pay with her body for affection and care which should be freely given. p4
For "as great a blessing as government is," the Rev. Peter Whitney explained, "like other blessings, it may become a scourge, a curse, and severe punishment to a people." What made it so, what turned power into a malignent force, was not its own nature so much as the nature of man—his susceptibility to corruption and his lust for self-aggrandizement.
Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office." It acts upon men like drink: it "is known to be intoxicating in its nature"—"too intoxicating and liable to abuse." And nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power—certainly not "the united considerations of reason and religion," for they have never "been sufficiently powerful to restrain these lusts of men.
Lydia had been fantasizing about him to the point she nearly drove him insane with it. It had taken four days for his energy to weaken inside her enough that he could go and visit her without fear she would throw him across the town in a gust of wind, and thus cause a scene. Although, getting run out of town after one day would be a new MacGregor record.
There ya are.” Erik grinned at her as he came bounding down the steps two at a time. He stepped around his statue of a sister as if such a thing were normal. Perhaps here it was. He paused, nodding at Malina. “Morning, banshee.” He gave a small brotherly laugh and poked his thumb toward her face. “She does kind of look like a banshee with her hair flying around like that and her mouth all open. Yeah, ma froze her good. See how her eyes don’t move?” Erik leaned closer to her and grinned as he looked into her mouth. “Ha, Euann put a mint in there.
...godly power and godly love are related to one another neither through subordination nor dialectically. Rather, God's mightiness is understood as the power of his love. Only love is almighty. Then God's lordship is to be understood as the rule of his mercy and God's law is accordingly the law of his grace.
Once war was considered the business of soldiers, international relations the concern of diplomats. But now that war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent, the free sport of kings has become the forced and internecine business of people, and diplomatic codes of honor between nations have collapsed. Peace in no longer serious; only war is serious. Every man and every nation is either friend or foe, and the idea of enmity becomes mechanical, massive, and without genuine passion. When virtually all negotiation aimed at peaceful agreement is likely to be seen as 'appeasement,' if not treason, the active role of the diplomat becomes meaningless; for diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war an interlude between wars, and in such a context the diplomat is replaced by the warlord.
It is their usual reaction; they employ not words and reasoned conversation or discourse to resolve problems, but the truncheon, the jackbooted foot, or the gun. Sophistication requires more competence and skill than mere thuggery. It is a harder, loftier charge to be civilised than to let the beast in man devour man. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, questions all, and thus, learns and grows. The weak, narrow mind makes its beliefs – whatever form they take – sacrosanct, defending them with violence if necessary. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control or make conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.They use language in its most evil, twisted form. They appeal to the lowest form of understanding, on a level I hesitate to allow for the term ‘human intelligence’ to be associated.Children, fertile minds ripe for molestation. Now they will be taught what to think, not how to think. Language, that twisted poison. It scars purity.
From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs. Pg. 77
Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs.In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production.Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal.Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness.Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.'Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature.Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.
Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214). Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation. Explanations for serious or sadistic child sex offending have typically rested on psychiatric concepts of ‘paedophilia’ or particular psychological categories that have limited utility for the study of the cultures of sexual abuse that emerge in the families or institutions in which organised abuse takes pace. For those clinicians and researchers who take organised abuse seriously, their reliance upon individualistic rather than sociological explanations for child sexual abuse has left them unable to explain the emergence of coordinated, and often sadistic, multi—perpetrator sexual abuse in a range of contexts around the world.
The data on organised abuse has been simplified or distorted in an attempt force it to conform to mechanical psychological models of dissociative obedience or else to the psychiatric framework of ‘paedophilia’. Psychopathology alone is an inadequate explanation for environments in which sexual abuse has a social and symbolic function for groups of adults. Abusive groups do not emerge in a vacuum but rather they are formed within pre-existing social arrangements such as families, churches and schools.
As mandatory reporting laws and community awareness drove an increase its child protection investigations throughout the 1980s, some children began to disclose premeditated, sadistic and organised abuse by their parents, relatives and other caregivers such as priests and teachers (Hechler 1988). Adults in psychotherapy described similar experiences. The dichotomies that had previously associated organised abuse with the dangerous, external ‘Other’ had been breached, and the incendiary debate that followed is an illustration of the depth of the collective desire to see them restored. Campbell (1988) noted the paradox that, whilst journalists and politicians often demand that the authorities respond more decisively in response to a ‘crisis’ of sexual abuse, the action that is taken is then subsequently construed as a ‘crisis’. There has been a particularly pronounced tendency of the public reception to allegations of organised abuse. The removal of children from their parents due to disclosures of organised abuse, the provision of mental health care to survivors of organised abuse, police investigations of allegations of organised abuse and the prosecution of alleged perpetrators of organised abuse have all generated their own controversies. These were disagreements that were cloaked in the vocabulary of science and objectivity but nonetheless were played out in sensationalised fashion on primetime television, glossy news magazines and populist books, drawing textual analysis. The role of therapy and social work in the construction of testimony of abuse and trauma. in particular, has come under sustained postmodern attack. Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214). Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation.
There are a range of useful and illuminating analyses of the media construction of organised abuse as it became front-page news in the 1980s and 1990s (Kitzinger 2004, Atmore 1997, Kelly 1998), but this book is focused on organised abuse as a criminal practice; as well as a discursive object of study, debate and disagreement. These two dimensions of this topic are inextricably linked because precisely where and how organised abuse is reported to take place is an important determinant of how it is understood. Prior to the 1980s, the predominant view of the police, psychiatrists and other authoritative professionals was that organised abuse occurred primarily outside the family where it was committed by extra-familial ‘paedophiles’. This conceptualisation; of organised abuse has received enduring community support to the present day, where concerns over children’s safety is often framed in terms of their vulnerability to manipulation by ‘paedophiles’ and ‘sex rings’. This view dovetails more generally with the medico-legal and media construction of the ‘paedophile as an external threat to the sanctity of the family and community (Cowburn and Dominelli 2001) but it is confounded by evidence that organised abuse and other forms of serious sexual abuse often originates in the home or in institutions, such as schools and churches, where adults have socially legitimate authority over children.
Like the psychological model outlined above, the psychiatric understanding of ’organised paedophilia’ is a framework that is focused primarily on individual psychological factors and overlooks the role of violence in criminal groups and the contexts in which such groups emerge. The underlying assumption of literature on ‘organised paedophilia’ is that members of sexually abusive groups are motivated by a pathological sexual interest in children but this does not accord with evidence that suggests that abusive groups can simultaneously abuse children and women. It is increasingly recognised that sexual offenders may not specialise in one particular victim category, and a significant proportion of child sexual abusers have also offended against adults (Cann et al. 2007, Heil et al. 2003). Furthermore, many of the behaviours of abusive groups appear to be designed to elicit fear and pain from the victim rather than to generate sexual pleasure for the perpetrator per se., are not mutually exclusive, but there is a sadistic dimension to organised abuse that is not explicable as ‘paedophilic’. A survivor of organised abuse from Belgium, Regina Louf, made this point clearly when she said: I find the expression ‘paedophile network’ misleading. For me paedophiles are those men who go to playgrounds or swimming pools, priests…I certainly don't want to exonerate them, but I would rather have paedophiles than the types we were involved with. There were men who never touched the children. Whether you were five, ten, or fifteen didn’t matter. What mattered to them was sex, power, experience. To do things they would never have tried with their own wives. Among them were some real sadists. (Louf quoted in Bulte and de Conick 1998) A credible theoretical account of organised abuse must necessarily (a) account for the available empirical evidence of organised abuse, (b) address the complex patterns of abuse and violence evident in sexually abusive groups, and (c) explain the ways in which sexually abusive groups form in a range of contexts, including families and institutions.
System fails when people with ability don't have authority and people with authority don't have ability.
I don’t care what your excuse is, I don’t care what you think God told you to do, if you are in the business of closing children’s minds and obliterating their capacity to imagine, and depriving them of a capacity to laugh, then you are a criminal. Maybe not under the law, but under any decent system of morality.Shame on anyone who brainwashes a child and attacks their individual liberty and deprives them of the freedom that is the very definition of a human being. Shame.
When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form.
Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings –
He(Prophet Muhammad) was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports.
Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the wealth they owe to science, our societies are still trying to practice and to teach systems of values already destroyed at the roots by that very science. Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance. His duty, like his fate, is written nowhere.
When the fuel is dried up in a vehicle, it stops driving automatically. You are a vehicle in the spiritual and the physical world, so you need some oil for alacrity, in order to get to your destination. The greater the quantity of your oil, the more you cover the distance, and the more you cover the distance, the closer you get to your success.
The American flag doesn't give her glory on a peaceful, calm day. It's when the winds pick up and become boisterous, do we see her strength. When she unfolds her hand, and shows her frayed fingers, where we see the stretch of red-blood lines of man that fought for this land. The purity of white stripes that strips our sins, and the stars of Abraham's covenant, broad in a midnight blue sky. The rights our forefathers established. As it waves high in the currents of freedom, where the Torch of Liberty shines over the sea, does she give meaning to unity. When we strive as one nation, or when it drops half-mast, to a fallen soldier.
When everything has gone down, God wants youto look up
I can do ALL THINGS through Christ who empowers, enriches, equips, enlightens, energizes, recreates, revives, promotes, strengthens, purifies, sponsors, and prepares me! Yes, I can... ALL THINGS, I can!
The strength of your obstacle determines the weight of your potentials. The greater your potentials, the heavier your dunamis power must be.
In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.
My Mother - AmmaHer touch was my solace,Her smile did encourage,Her love was my strength,Her stare, I fully decant,Her care was my power,Her joy was my shower,Her anger corrected my path,Her laughter filled my heart,Her silence made me ponder,Her glare was my reminder,Her scorn corrected my track,Her embrace I never did lack.
You make the world come alive. You make the world colorful. You are the inspiration behind all that happens. You are the pillar of strength to many around you, the centrifugal force of your own little world, called family. I love being a women and celebrate being one everyday, hope you all do too!! And to all those who battle their various circumstances, the hurdles, the sacrifices and the compromises they make, wish them all inner strength! Happy Women's Day!
If you truly want to pursue and achieve the success you were created for, you must recognize the role of vision, the significance of dreams and the power of actions without which you are just making a living.
One Crack On A Mirror Can Ruin The Beauty of It But Most Importantly, It Ruins The Reflection of The Individual, By Making It Twisted, Zigzag And Ugly. Character Is Like A Mirror. So Build Your Character In Such A Way That It Reflects All The Good In Others Who Follows You Or Treat You As An Idol....
This trespass had not come without a price. Living un-lives, material comforts and luxuries became superfluous, connection to the outside world undesirable, and power their only sustenance. But they had paid gladly, considering this “humanity” a small price for the power they now wielded; power that would sustain them far beyond the lives of mere humans and perhaps, in time, even grant them immortality.
Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime ‘let out all the length of the reins.
Hate destroys, love builds: be a creator. Fear closes, love opens: be an advocate for life. Guilt stagnates, love permits: be a peaceful warrior. Anger takes away, love gives: be a foundation for life. A defeatist attitude makes its own bed while love has the power to design its very own house.
Inventions are not solely the making of material things, inventions are also the mental unleashing of ideas by a genuis with a sixth sense.
It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.
The future is as blank as a plane sheet if you don't have an eagle's eye, that's why you should climb to a vantage point to get a good perspective view at your future.
They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about,but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy it or repaint it. We want to be the masters of the future only for the power to change the past. We fight for access to the labs where we can retouch photos and rewrite biographies and history.
Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And - how many of us do know it?
I am about tribal feminine power. As a leader, I may stumble but my essence lives to the future-- of my people, of my literature, of my art. And when a tribesman turn against its leader, that tribe will become two. It may faulter my course, but it will not stifle my ending. I rule only among my believers.
In politics no permanent friends, no permanent enemies but permanent interest.
The Master doesn't try to be powerful;thus he is truly powerful.The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;thus he never has enough.The Master does nothing,yet he leaves nothing undone.The ordinary man is always ding things,yet many more are left to be done.[…]Therefore the Master concerns himselfWith the depths and not the surface,With the fruit and not the flower.[…]Teaching without words,Performing without actions:That is the Master’s way.[…]The Master arrives without leaving,Sees the light without looking,Achieves without doing a thing.[…]The Master is above the people,And no one feels oppressed.She goes ahead of the people,And no feels manipulated.The whole world is grateful to her.Because she completes with no one,No one can complete with her.
What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former.
Power as a beneficial tool for aspiring achievers is primarily made up into four folds;1. Power to control emotions,2. Power to make right decisions,3. Power to stand against depression,4. Power to excel in innovations.
Plan and plant your gifts. Pray and play your role. The harvest is assured when God manifests his anointing power in your passionate actions.
A healer's power stems not from any special ability, but from maintaining the courage and awareness to embody and express the universal healing power that every human being naturally possesses.
The heart is the door to our inner woman. The heart is the door to our inner world. The power chakra relates to the inner man. The power chakra relates to the outer world. Irrespective of if we are a man or a woman, the inner woman is the center of our consciousness.
I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition. I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes. People in spiritual organizations also tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierachies of power, status, roles, ambition and obidience.Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can, and some take something deeper.
Thus it is said:The path into the light seems dark,the path forward seems to go back,the direct path seems long,true power seems weak,true purity seems tarnished,true steadfastness seems changeable,true clarity seems obscure,the greatest are seems unsophisticated,the greatest love seems indifferent,the greatest wisdom seems childish.The Tao is nowhere to be found.Yet it nourishes and completes all things.
I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria.But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense.All friendships are negotiations of power.
The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount—100 tons—of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible.
When we are faced with circumstances, He gives us the Power to endure! When we are faced with loss, He grants us the Poise to hold on. When we come across failure, He installs back in us the Potential to rise up again. When we meet death, He gave us the Pleasure to be carried up into the Lovely coasts of eternity!
Power is a fickle mistress, easy to seduce, but even easier to lose. That's how it works. One moment she is your closest confidant, whispering the secrets of the universe into your ear; the next, she is your vilest oppressor—and once her ears close to your plights you are well and truly screwed.
Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder—a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.
It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it.
When human men hold an object that makes a powerful noise, or has moving parts, or spins around fast, or has a button they can push (which either screws or nails something) they become Gods in their own heads.They can do anything: they can eat through walls and bring buildings together to form mighty empires.They can build floating cities and flying tin cans.But they still can’t make their own beds.
When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn’t been one big decision.
Cars are empowered by either petrol or diesel or gas. That is their fuel. I don't care whether you want to pour pepper soup or orange juice into that car... It can't work! You can't live without intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and move forward
Superiority complex does not mean "pride" although it appears to be so in the eyes of those who want to see it so. When you feel a higher esteem over the obstacles you desire to surmount, you highly overcome them and can still count a reserved energy to spare!
The economy of your country shall never determine the size of your three square meals if you know you can rise against and above all limitations! The climatic emergencies in the weather shall never determine your survival rates if you know you are above their standards!
Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. Indeed, business all too often pulls the strings of government. Competing institutions-religion, the press, even the military-play subordinate roles in much of the world today. If a values-driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance.
The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer.
Then sudden Felagund there swayingSang in answer a song of staying,Resisting, battling against power,Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;Of changing and of shifting shape,Of snares eluded, broken traps,The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2).
It is not real," he whispered. "This place is only a thought that has grabbed hold of you. It cannot harm you. You are not of this place, and it has no power over you. You do not need it, nor do you owe it your allegiance." I nodded, listening only to his words and not to the rattling of the windows, which had begun as soon as we stepped inside.
Some energies are not as potent. The only way to develop a potent energy is to spend an existence on the earth. There, one can develop a compassionate nature so that when passing onto other dimensions, one can be of help. When one leaves one’s earth body one will need to fully understand compassion to be helpful, effective. On earth, you are encapsulated in flesh...No soul is forced into an assignment upon the earth. Instead they go to their ‘rightful space’. When you leave the earth you have a lot more power. It won’t be ego-based power. Rather it will be beyond ego, beyond good and evil. In fact, ‘evil’ is just a label as everything is intermixed. The pendulum just appears to swing back and forth.”..."Kuan Yin is showing me a person running with sandbags. She’s telling me that when the person finally lets-go of the sandbags, she or he is faster, stronger. Oh. I get it! That’s what the earth existence is like. In many ways living on earth is an ‘artificial’ burden. Once one is free of one’s body, they are not only lighter but also stronger, more powerful. I’m reminded of a time when I was a child. I felt so limited. I remember thinking, ‘Why can’t I just be wherever I want to be and physically not have to walk or use transportation? Why do I have to physically cross the street?’”-Lena Lees
Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?""Yes. They're prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government tends to drive you mad.""But are they more virtuous or more intelligent? Or more compassionate?""Ha!""Let's call that one a 'no.
Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed...to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight...[We] ought to show peculiar zeal...in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts.
The truth is this: The rich will rule even at a place like Oberlin, where their kind is technically forbidden. They will simply invert the power structure to suit their needs. They will come out on top no matter what. Stuyvesant was hard but hopeful; Oberlin, on the other hand, reminds me yet again how the world works. I guess that's why they call it an education.
You know when it comes to who should govern themselves, we have old people talking around tables,” Jimmi says. “When you throw religion into the mix, you have a whole new set of problems. You can't say one has nothing to do with the other because that is simply not true. You have to change the government before we set religious freedoms. People like Firo and Clavis, they just don't want to suppress people. They want wealth and power. It's hard to find those who don't.
Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe that Cincinnatus, the one man in whom Rome reposed all her hope of survival, was at that moment working a little three-acre farm (now known as Quinctian meadows) west of the Tiber, just opposite the spot where the shipyards are today. A mission from the city found him at work on his land - digging a ditch, maybe, or ploughing. Greetings were exchanged, and he was asked - with a prayer for God's blessing on himself and his country - to put on his toga and hear the Senate's instructions. This naturally surprised him, and, asking if all were well, he told his wife Racilia to run to their cottage and fetch his toga. The toga was brought, and wiping the grimy sweat from his hands and face he put it on; at once the envoys from the city saluted him, with congratulations, as Dictator, invited him to enter Rome, and informed him of the terrible danger of Minucius's army.
To be sure, I had, and have, spent the better part of my post-college life growing up in the public eye, with my shameful warts, big and ugly, looming there for the world to see; and it has been a mighty battle trying to be a man, a Black man, a human being, a responsible and consistent human being, as I have interfaced with my past and with my personal demons, with friends and lovers, with enemies and haters. As Tupac Shakur once famously said to me, “There is no placed called careful.” On the one hand, Tupac was right: There is not much room for error in America if you are a Black male in a society ostensibly bent on profiling your every move, eager to capitalize on your falling into this or that trap, particularly keen to swoop down on your self-inflicted mishaps. But by the same token, Tupac was wrong: There can be a place called careful, once one becomes aware of the world one lives in, its potential, its limitations, and if one is willing to struggle to create a new model, some new and alternative space outside and away from the larger universe, where one can be free enough to comprehend that even if the world seems aligned against you, you do not have to give the world the rope to hang you with.
How do you get rid of unhappiness? You must release yourself from the prison you have unknowingly placed yourself in. Come to terms with the fact that there are things that you cannot control. But, just because you don’t ‘control’ something, doesn’t mean it’s going to fall to pieces. That may be the hardest part. We get bent out of shape when something happens that is out of our control, because we don’t understand why it’s happening or where it’s coming from. It’s unsettling. You put your fighting arms up and prepare to battle the world. But, stop for a moment. Think. Where are all of these things coming from?The world is not a wild, untamed place, where things are a free for all. Understand that there is a higher power running the world.
The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.
Bradshaw especially didn't like the use of the word "experiment" in regard to social conditions. Experiments included of necessity, expendable components. Failure was a precursor to success. When the components were human, who had the audacity to use, lose them, toss them away?
Humans do not simply, innocently, and honestly disagree with each other about the good, the just, the right, the principles and applications of moral distinction and valuation, for they are already caught, like it or not, in a complex dynamic of each other’s desires, recognition, power, and comparisons which not only relativizes moral distinctions and valuations, but makes them a constant and dangerous source of discord.
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
With great abilities come great responsibilities; great power comes with great assignments.With great age comes great reasoning; great actions come great experience.With great battles come great victories; great trees come with great tap roots.However, if a little faith can move great mountains, what then will a great faith do? Mysterious things... I guess
A ray of sunshine, I bring to the world my passion of guiding others to their point of power by first loving themselves from the inside out. I Am on a never ending journey of self discovery and that has earned me a PHd in life experience I share with you. If your ready to walk the path of happy, I am your partner and together we Can transform your world into something extraordinarily awesome.
Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the freedom to know and tell their stories. Even the most private and confidential disclosure of past abuses increases the likelihood of eventual public disclosure. And public disclosure is something that perpetrators are determined to prevent. As in the case of more overtly political crimes, perpetrators will fight tenaciously to ensure that their abuses remain unseen, unacknowledged, and consigned to oblivion.The dialectic of trauma is playing itself out once again. It is worth remembering that this is not the first time in history that those who have listened closely to trauma survivors have been subject to challenge. Nor will it be the last. In the past few years, many clinicians have had to learn to deal with the same tactics of harassment and intimidation that grassroots advocates for women, children and other oppressed groups have long endured. We, the bystanders, have had to look within ourselves to find some small portion of the courage that victims of violence must muster every day.Some attacks have been downright silly; many have been quite ugly. Though frightening, these attacks are an implicit tribute to the power of the healing relationship. They remind us that creating a protected space where survivors can speak their truth is an act of liberation. They remind us that bearing witness, even within the confines of that sanctuary, is an act of solidarity. They remind us also that moral neutrality in the conflict between victim and perpetrator is not an option. Like all other bystanders, therapists are sometimes forced to take sides. Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator's unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. p.246 - 247Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. February, 1997
All my life,I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid.And now, in this darkness, I fear nothing. If you were to leave me here, I would feel nothing. I would walk as I am walking now. As a man, you can't know what I mean by what I say.You can't know a woman's vulnerability. You can't know the sense of power that belongs to me now.
For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn't care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe's share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at anything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge.
I think, actually I know that it's overwhelmingly possible for men to conduct such atrocities as to kill a man in cold blood, to burn towns and to parade with the the dead on the tips of their swords. People who think they are doing something for the good of all are the most dangerous and stirs their intent deeper. There might have been a time when I thought differently and I would have answered with a quick no but that time had long passed. Do I think it's in human nature to be violent and to succumb to it? Sure I do. It's to justify it, that I think is inhuman.
I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no longer capable of loosing my head in love, Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it has come out in another way, for ambition is nothing but a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of pride?
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.”— Martin Luther King Jr.
Any time someone gives you drugs, the purpose is to subdue. Always. Whether it is from a dealer, a friend, your mother/brother/sister/son, or your government--especially your government--the intention is to subdue, and always to feed another motive. Why? Because in getting high, your power and your intellect are blunted. Can the motive ever be in your best interests? Governments notoriously use sex, drink, and drugs to subdue their people. Notoriously. And we're falling for it.
Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough.
Kira is evil ... There's no denying that ... But lately I've been starting to think of it more like this ... The real evil is the power to kill people. Someone who finds himself with that power is cursed. No matter how you use it, anything obtained by killing people can never bring true happiness.
Perceptual fields are limited by the attractor patterns that they're associated with. This means that the capacity to recognize significant factors in a given situation is limited by the context that arises from the level of consciousness of the observer. The motive of the viewer automatically determines what is seen; causality is, therefore, ascribed to factors that are, in fact, a function of the biases of the observer and aren't at all instrumental in the situation itself.
The introduction to horrors so young impressed on me just how helpless and vulnerable I was. Parents are supposed to empower their children to live without them but in my family, I wasn’t given permission to be my own person. I thought I needed them to live and then they abandoned me. It’s no wonder I felt so unempowered well into my adult years.
Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this [atomic] energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dream of scientific fiction, but the remotest possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighbouring substances. In this event, the whole of the hydrogen on earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.
When you permit an outside agency to control your feelings and emotions at frequent intervals for a prolonged period, your system will soon get into the habit of submitting to the control of this outside agency, and will not respond any longer to any effort that the will may make to regain its original power of control.
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings of self into the realm of spirit - unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come into their fire find the gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hindlegs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
Until one nation ceases its attempts to dominate another, there will never be true freedom. Until one religion relinquishes its quest to prove its god superior to that of another, there shall never be world peace. We will never truly prosper or experience lasting harmony, until we refrain from preaching the gospel of our own moral values and our personal preferences by forcing it upon others.
An ordinary man gets arrogant with beauty, conceited with knowledge and ruthless with power.
Human beings have capitalized on the silence of animals, just as certain human beings have historically imposed silence on certain other human beings by denying slaves the right to literacy, denying women the right to own property, and denying both the right to vote.
Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance.
It is because of the Biblical curse on man's search for knowledge, which has so paralyzed his mind during the past ages, and its detrimental effect upon progress, that makes the Bible the most wicked, the most detestable, the most pernicious, and the most obnoxious book ever published. It has been a curse to the human race.It is the duty of every brave and honest man and woman to do everything in his and her power to destroy the influence of this utterly stupid and vicious book, with its infantile concept of life and its nonsense concerning the universe. It is their duty to do everything within their power to stop its demoralizing and paralyzing influence upon the life of man.We will never achieve intellectual liberty until the wickedness of this book has been discarded with the belief in the flatness of the earth.
Nay, could their numbers countervail the stars,Or ever-drizzling drops of April showers,Or wither'd leaves that autumn shaketh down,Yet would the Soldan by his conquering powerSo scatter and consume them in his rage, That not a man should live to rue their fall.
Why would they lie to us?”“Because deep down, we're all afraid of having peace. Because deep down we know we're all poisoned. We're more afraid of ourselves than we are of others. In that thinking, we deny ourselves the very power that we could have. In that thinking, we put liars on pedestals. Then, when the time is right they proclaim their lies as truth and revel in it as if they did something truly righteous and people will fall to their knees because we never learn if our mistakes are never admitted and cataloged. What better way to destroy a person than to make them realize that everything they ever believed was wrong?
Now, I don't believe that a god exists. I think that gods are creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.
The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure.
I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy—1000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emission about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown. ... [T]he possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure.
Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.
Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or THINK they have) gained.
I looked for it [heavy hydrogen, deuterium] because I thought it should exist. I didn't know it would have industrial applications or be the basic for the most powerful weapon ever known [the nuclear bomb] ... I thought maybe my discovery might have the practical value of, say, neon in neon s
Statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgements: that those statements are worth making, perhaps more worth making than certain others, that I am the sort of person entitled to make them and perhaps able to guarantee their truth, that you are the kind of person worth making them to, that something useful is accomplished by making them, and so on.
All of our descriptive statements move within an often invisible network of value-categories, and indeed without such categories we would have nothing to say to each other at all. It is not just as though we have something called factual knowledge which may then be distorted by particular interests and judgements, although this is certainly possible; it is also that without particular interests we would have no knowledge at all, because we would not see the point of bothering to get to know anything. Interests are constitutive of our knowledge, not merely prejudices which imperil it. The claim that knowledge should be 'value-free' is itself a value-judgement.
I don't want anything to happen to you. You being hurt...that thought fills me with dread. I can't promise not to interfere, not if I think you'll come to harm." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "I love you, Anastasia. I will do everything in my power to protect you. I cann't imagine my life without you.
Shamed and enraged, I sit by the side of the road and cry.Eclipsed by a sense of disgrace, my emotions feel momentarily stifled and disconnected. Instead of anger, I feel dishonored and exposed. I cannot even formulate my thoughts, much less speak them. My integrity and humility have been violated. I have only my own indignation to spur me on.
No one is charismatic. Someone becomes charismatic in history, socially. The question for me is once again the problem of humility. If the leader discovers that he is becoming charismatic not because of his or her qualities but because mainly he or she is being able to express the expectations of a great mass of people, then he or she is much more of a translator of the aspirations and dreams of the people, instead of being the creator of the dreams. In expressing the dreams, he or she is recreating these dreams. If he or she is humble, I think that the danger of power would diminish.
Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.
The potential, for anything, was overwhelming to a degree that bothered him. It wasn’t, he thought, the idea of power. It certainly wasn’t that nervous feeling T.C. would get in the pit of his stomach when he knew he had an incredible opportunity in front of him, that amazing brief pause before an act of creation. This was something else. Something to fear and respect.
Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.
There is a sacred calling on your life, and the question is: Will you spend your life flittering and fluttering about or take the time and really heed that call and create your own path to your highest good?...You cannot let other people define your life for you. You are the author of your own life...Real power is when you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, the best it can be done. Authentic power. There's a surge, there's a kind of energy field that says, "I'm in my groove, I'm in my groove." And nobody has to tell you, "You go, girl," because you know you're already gone.
I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and [Anthony] Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with wonderful Power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy.
Either ‘the group’ is superior or the individual is superior. Marxism, socialism, fascism, and pure democracy are all forms that give power to ‘the group’ and then use violence to force individuals to obey the dictates of ‘the group’. The concept of liberty is one in which the individual - in the exercise of his unalienable rights - is superior to every and all powers. That is what the Founders intended. That is what we are supposed to have under the ‘contracts’ of the Declaration of Independence and the state and federal constitutions. That is what I am entitled to as an American. That is what I insist upon. And that is what I will kill for.
It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: "Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must.
There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to entrenched power, as the old court jesters.
White men are irresponsible with their power and money. Our beautiful earth is million of years old, and in a mere five hundred years, white people have nearly destroyed it. Another hundred years like the last hundred, and there won't be a living creature left on the planet.-character Amber Johnson (Broken)
He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.
When men in power decide that things need to be rebalanced at any cost, the violence is never brief and never really directed solely at the imbalance that supposedly inspired it. The rule of law becomes the rule of violence. Revenge becomes a synonym for justice. No city is safe from such horror, no nation, no time in all of history. Be ready to recognize the moment. Be always ready.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy.
What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.
In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape.
He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.
...It is necessary for the average citizen, if he wishes to make a living, to avoid incurring the hostility of certain big men. And these big men have an outlook - religious, moral, and political - with which they expect their employees to agree, at least outwardly.
Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice.
There are two different kinds of people in the world. There are people who instinctively look for every chance to be a “victim” and those who look for every chance to rise above—regardless of where they are in life and what’s happening around them. There are people who realize their ability to create (greatly influence) reality toward a positive direction for themselves and those around them, and unfortunately those who use this power we all have for destructive purposes for themselves and others—many times without even knowing what they’re doing or the power they have inside themselves. We are all powerful individuals. Let’s use that power to create something beautiful!
[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.
One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...
For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer master, but an animal among animals; under the Martian heel.
Another misconception is that desires are insatiable. Admittedly, for the small segment of society that is clinically deranged, this statement may not hold true. But for those seeking riches, pleasure, or power, too much of a good thing dulls the appetite.” – Jeremy Lyons [Survival of the Fittest]
God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.
In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.
I had no idea what humans were capable of. I heard they were crafty, but how are they able to do such things?You mean harness light and water? Speedy asked. Change the weather?Yes.It's only the beginning, Speedy said. There are more marvels waiting. Some not so marvelous.Such as?Be not in haste, said the tortoise.There is nothing here but time.If you live long enough, you will see.Of course, though, you will see them from your cage.Live long enough? I asked. Are there mortal dangers here?The tortoise chuckled. The boy doesn't always take very good care of his prisoners, Rex the lizard chimed in.What do you mean? He doesn't feed us enough?Sometimes he doesn't understand what we need to survive, Rex answered. Sometimes he plays too rough.How can a creature able to bend the laws of nature be so cruel? I asked.
What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.
In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known.
All men were tools, as she saw it. Dangerous tools, when roused, but that was why one took care in efforts of control. It all came back to leverage. It wasn’t enough to ask a man if he would kill his brother. One had to make him see the consequences if he did not. Then one could only ask, which would he choose: brother or daughter? For all that kin might mean, most would choose the daughter.
Mary sat on a bench in the park. It was the middle of the night and she was alone and she felt at peace. She leaned back and looked upward. The sky was endless and expansive and the stars stretched on forever. It made her feel very small but it also made her feel very important. Of all of the things that might have ever had the chance to exist in the history of the universe, she had the privilege of being one of them. A living, thinking, feeling being, with the ability to control her own destiny. As wondrous and expansive as stars and the entire universe were, none of them had this power. None of them had any control. And yet she felt humbled to be a part of it at all. It felt like a trade-off. In this life you could only be one or the other: wondrous and expansive or small and in control.
I realize the simple truth is that power isn’t control at all- power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.
Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won, because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party.
The real problem is I'm greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don't want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn't want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it, urn it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don't want things to happen to me, I want them to happen because of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. the blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I'm its god an it always bends to my will and when I'm done I know, inside, that it's markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That's happiness.
The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive support of the State. It has the ear of rulers and the control of education. Every generation is suborned in its favor. Those who dissent from it are losers, those who oppose it are ostracised; while in the past, for century after century, it has replied to criticism with imprisonment, and to scepticism with the dungeon and the stake. By such means it has induced a general tendency to allow its pretensions without inquiry and its beneficence without proof.
…egalitarianism and despotism do not exclude each other, but usually go hand in hand. To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of a society equal, and then to maintain this equality for a long period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, ‘We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.’ Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.
THE EMPRESS LO was not beautiful but she was ambitious and, sometimes, ambition can take you further than beauty. The women of the court never wondered how she got this far because as all women know, the rise to power is relatively simple ~ especially if it is a man who has control. ~ from the Three Lives of Empress Lo. Forthcoming.
Today's politicians are like policemen on traffic duty. They are just dealing with traffic right in front of them. Yet they want to be the Superintendent based on that alone. The politicians and the bigwigs in finance have no ambition. There are too many who confuse the power that they got by their position as their own ability.
The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.
Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbour. (1936)
It's called the Infinity Effect.
...Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze. “I understand,” she said. It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.
Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to find a world which was at peace with itself. No matter how always those few wanted more than others. Those not satisfied with running their own lives but wishing to have power over the lives of the others. Greedy people. Greedy for wealth, or power or both.
Pah…commoners, traders." Ergus made a disparaging gesture.Traders with money, Ergus. Money they put at the disposition of young Tanahkos," Lmachdan said in a dry tone. "Money that turns into soldiers. Soldiers who are used to extort tribute from us. Tribute that is turned into more soldiers. The warlord has a good thing going, I'll say that for him.
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.
I’ve come to realize the power of reflection, the kind that comes only from contemplation. Synchronizing ourselves with the awe-inspiring environment around us is indeed a tremendous feat that, at some point or another, we must all undergo, alone yet together.
But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?""Yes, I am fond of history.""I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very tiresome.
One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon the threshold. In the dim light the bedclothes bulged in a semi-circle, that must be Albertine who, with her body bent, was sleeping with her feet and face to the wall. Only, overflowing the bed, the hair upon that head, abundant and dark, made me realise that it was she, that she had not opened her door, had not stirred, and I felt that this motionless and living semi-circle, in which a whole human life was contained and which was the only thing to which I attached any value, I felt that it was there, in my despotic possession.
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.
In other words if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. One can see how this worked at its starkest in Xenophon’s Anabasis, which tells the story of an army of Greek mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers, and then hold a collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest.
When anyone is going wrong, it is a mistake to warn him not to go further. It is also a mistake to leave him alone. The proper course is to call his attention to something better, and frame our conversation in such a way that he becomes wholly absorbed in the better. He will then forget his old mistakes, his old faults and his old desires, and will give all his life and power to the building of that better which has engaged his new interest.
If the distinction is not held too rigidly nor pressed too far, it is interesting to think of Shakespeare's chief works as either love dramas or power dramas, or a combination of the two. In his Histories, the poet handles the power problem primarily, the love interest being decidedly incidental. In the Comedies, it is the other way around, overwhelmingly in the lighter ones, distinctly in the graver ones, except in Troilus and Cressida--hardly comedy at all--where without full integration something like a balance is maintained. In the Tragedies both interests are important, but Othello is decidedly a love drama and Macbeth as clearly a power drama, while in Hamlet and King Lear the two interests often alternate rather than blend.
In everything, depend upon yourself, but work in harmony with all things. Do not depend even upon the Infinite, but learn to work and live in harmony with the Infinite. The highest teachings of the Christ reveal most clearly the principle that no soul was created to be a mere helpless instrument in the hands of Supreme Power, but that every soul should act and live in perfect oneness with that Power. And the promise is that we all are not only to do the things that Christ did, but even greater things.
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
You must lay aside your greed; have no unworthy motive in your desire to become rich and powerful. It is legitimate and right to desire riches, if you want them for the sake of your soul, but not if you desire them for the lists of the flesh.
There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve.
[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors!
A preoccupation with power - black power, student power, flower power, poor power, 'the power structure' - is the striking aspect of the American political scene at the moment. Oddly enough, obsession with power goes hand in hand with a fear of power. Some of the New Left groups that talk the toughest about power are extremely reluctant to see power operate in any institutional form; within their own organizations, they shun 'hierarchies' and formally structured relations of authority. What the preoccupation with power reflects, essentially, is a deep=seated, pervasive feeling of powerlessness.
I chiefly concern myself with those who seldom get a hearing, & I don't feel it is incumbent on me to balance their voices with the well-crafted apologetics of the powerful. The powerful are generally excellently served by the mainstream media or propaganda organs. The powerful should be quoted, yes, but to measure their pronouncements against the truth, not to obscure it.
The special skill of the politician consists in knowing what passions can be most easily aroused, and how to prevent them, when aroused, from being harmful to himself and his associates...Moreover, since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation.
The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the experts consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so. (The proviso is essential, because measures which arouse serious resentment are seldom advantageous, whatever merits they may have otherwise.) The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others.
Ordinary men wonder why those of only average intelligence so often rise to the highest levels of power, while highly intelligent people generally do not. They fail to understand that reaching the highest levels of power has nothing to do with admired attributes such as intelligence and competence. The predominant characteristic of those who rise to the highest levels of power is a total disregard for the consequences – including death – that will befall thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human beings if it is deemed necessary to attain his (or her) goals. Generally speaking, it is this total disregard for humanity that has distinguished ‘rulers’ throughout history.