Power - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

''It is a wonderful thing,'' he cried, ''to feel that one can command powers of good and of evil - a ministering angel or a demon of vengeance.''

- Arthur Conan Doyle, ''Lot No. 249'' (1892)

It was the law of Hadden's existence never to deny himself anything that he desired if it lay within his power to take it - a law which had led him always deeper into sin.

- H. Rider Haggard, ''Black Heart and White Heart'' (1896)

The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave NewWorld (1932)

Man has always dreamed of power. But damn it, man has always dreamed of love, too, and of the rights of his fellow man. The only power worthy of man is the power of all mankind struggling together toward a goal of unobtainable perfection.

- Anthony Boucher, ''The Barrier'' (1942)

Meanwhile, as should be, the clever will rule the stupid for their own good. The realists will rule the dreamers. Those with free hands will rule those who have deliberately handcuffed themselves with taboos.

- Fritz Leiber, ''Poor Superman'' (1951)

He had opened the gates of infinity, and now felt awe - even fear - for all that he had done.

- Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars (1956)

The lust for power is a part of human life. As long as people want power badly enough, they'll use any means to get it - fair or foul! Peaceful or otherwise!

- Frank Herbert, ''Cease Fire'' (1958)

''A world is supported by four things . . .'' She held up four big-knuckled fingers. ''. . . the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing . . .'' She closed her fingers into a fist. ''. . . without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.''

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

Ged crouched among the dripping bushes wet and sullen, and wondered what was the good of having power if you were too wise to use it.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

Power has become so subtle and complex a thing in the ways taken by the Ekumen that only a subtle mind can watch it work; here it is still limited, still visible. In Estraven, for instance, one feels the man's power as an augmentation of his character; he cannot make an empty gesture or say a word that is not listened to. He knows it, and the knowledge gives him more reality than most people own: a solidness of being, a substantiality, a human grandeur.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

Coercion is the least efficient means of obtaining order.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

We have lost what is Random, we have banished the Arbitrary, Mistress Christia.With our power rings and our gene banks we can, if we desire, change the courses of the planets, populate them with any kind of creature we wish, make our old sun burst with fresh energy or fade completely from the firmament.We control All. Nothing controls us!

- Michael Moorcock, ''Pale Roses'' (1974)

Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.

- Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

- Chris Boucher, ''The Face of Evil,'' episode of DoctorWho (1977)

The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

- George Lucas, StarWars (film, 1977)

The Force will be with you, always.

- George Lucas, StarWars (film, 1977)

Beware of small men, he had often told himself, because they are the movers and shakers of the world.

- Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise (1979)

The insistence of the weak, he thought; their dreadful power. It is so much easier to throw a body-block against the strong!

- Philip K. Dick, ''Chains of Air, Web of Aether'' (1980)

A commanding officer's ''unlimited'' authority isn't freedom; it's a straitjacket. She can't do as she pleases; she never can - because every minute, awake and asleep, she must protect those under her command.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast (1980)

Perhaps he's reached that stage of intoxication which power is said to inspire, the state in which you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything, absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all.

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

That's what authority is, isn't it? The power to make people afraid?

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

It was the seat of government; it held the power. It was the powerhouse, the powder magazine, the bomb. Power had been compressed, jammed into those old reddish walls, packed and forced into them over years, over centuries, till if it exploded it would burst with horrible violence, hurling pointing shards of stone.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Unlocking the Air'' (1990)

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary.

- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (1992)

Power wasn't a matter of job titles, after all. Power was a matter of vision, persuasiveness, freedom of movement, fame, influence.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

You can tear people like him apart like a piece of paper, but it doesn't change anything.

- M. John Harrison, ''Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring'' (1994)

Kathy thought of celebrity as a subtle fluid, a universal element, like the phlogiston of the ancients, something spread evenly at creation through all the universe, but prone now to accrete, under specific conditions, around certain individuals and their careers.

- William Gibson, Idoru (1996)

A bit of what you call weakness would do you a world of good. Put some softness in your voice once in a while. Strength shouldn't be a shield, woman, but a sword.

- Tara K. Harper, Wolf's Bane (1997)

Virtue was only the vice of whoever happened to be in control.

- Ralph A. Sperry, ''On Vacation'' (1998)