power

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

I assure you I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

When you have robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power. He is free again.

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power --he's free again.

Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Orchards Smiling through departed leaves, Like diamond sapphires in evening sun Hang ripening fruit and from the eaves Grey sparrows make unending run, Oh happy land, Bless thy fertile soil, Oh happy people born to work and prayer, With God to guide and strength to toil, With heart and help goes will and power.

I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it - only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power.