Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use-of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

Great power constitutes its own argument, and it never has much trouble drumming up friends, applause, sympathetic exegesis, and a band.

What makes human power erupt like a volcano? What destroy's it? The civilizations of Rome, Greece, Egypt, China were all eruptions from a human core.

The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

One of the most dangerously vicious circles menacing the continued existence of all mankind arises through that grim striving for the highest possible position within the ranked order, in other words, the reckless pursuit of power which combines with an insatiable greed of neurotic proportions that the results of acquired power confer.

Deny a strong man his due, and he will take all he can get.