Powers That Be Quotes

#1. It's enshrined in our Constitution that an individual has a right to release information and disseminate information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable.

Moby

#2. If someone wanted to have a grudge against me, or didn't agree with my lifestyle, the way I breathed, the space I took up on this planet, they had an open door to 'report' to the powers that be.

Mark Alders

#3. Powers that be, powers of three, let Caterina's destiny be all that I see.

Rachel Harris

#4. Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year.

David Davis

#5. The "Powers That Be" are not smart enough to engineer Armageddon, but they may yet be stupid enough. If governments are involved in covering up the knowledge of aliens, then they are doing a much better job of it than they seem to do at anything else.

Stephen Hawking

#6. People want everything to come out of a drive thru window. They want it instant and they want it fast. I succumb to that, we all succumb to that. We're in it. That's the culture. So the enemy, the powers that be, the manipulators behind the scenes play to our natural weaknesses.

Alex Jones

#7. There are lots of women and lots of men in the business that the powers that be decide are the right people and they'll stand with them for quite a long time.

Rupert Everett

#8. By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough: Powers that Be Power Lines Power Play

Anonymous

#9. I have been ranting and raving about this ever since the idea of the Cloud Ark was announced. So far all I get in return, from the powers that be, are vague answers and hand-wavy happy talk.

Neal Stephenson

#10. There is nothing so enervating and exhausting as this hopeless waiting. I dare say this is only a transition period. I will and shall have a victory some day. If the powers that be have shown me so little favor as to place me in this world and make me what I am, the result must be accordingly.

Henrik Ibsen

#11. The overarching issue, as I see it, is the elitism of America's political system; the fact that regular, ordinary Americans aren't considered in policy debates or legislation, and regularly get shafted by the powers-that-be in Washington.

Jerry Springer

#12. If the powers that be really knew how much time I spent thinking about and researching celebrities, they probably wouldn't let me anywhere near the red carpet. But, please promise not to tell them. I'm harmless, I swear.

Ross Mathews

#13. Don't Go With The Flow. The Powers That Be Turn The Taps

Dean Cavanagh

#14. The powers that be understand that sexual freedom or liberation with any kind of joy means they are losing control.

Betty Dodson

#15. The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it's necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation.

James Morcan

#16. It is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

Karl Marx

#17. I was cut out of The Doors. I was Okie Girl, a groupie. The powers that be thought that my character made Jim Morrison look too sleazy, if you can imagine. I saw the movie-it was so loud I had a headache for three days.

Jennifer Tilly

#18. We know that's the bottom line: if money is made, the powers that be pay attention.

Regina King

#19. Abandonment of slavery is also the banishment of the chimera of security. The world will not change overnight, and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them.

Germaine Greer

#20. Therefore, I feel convinced that any political picture can be changed to suit the needs of the powers that be.

Thor Heyerdahl

#21. Grace does not contest the powers-that-be through an effective show of verifiable strength but through a persistent and subversive recoding of how one defines what strength and weakness are.

Adam Miller

#22. All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers.

Wendell Berry

#23. Try to reject war and give peace a chance. Question the powers that be and find out why they make the dubious decisions they do that send young people to war.

Helen Thomas

#24. Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.

Watchman Nee

#25. In fact I think now we've reached a point now, where the powers that be really have sort of vested interest in all of us being stoned out as much as possible all the time so we don't know what's going on, and we don't care.

Lester Bangs

#26. The powers that be have a way of outlawing many beautiful things made by ordinary people. I don't know why that should be, I only know it is.

Stephen King

#27. I definitely want to continue working in independent films - and big budget stuff as well - but there's a freedom you have when you're not getting paid. It's easier to say no and there's no pressure to please the powers that be. Also I don't have to hear 'flirt and smile more.'

Trieste Kelly Dunn

#28. I had learned and written too much history not to know that the great masses always and at once respond to the force of gravity in the direction of the powers that be. I knew that the same voices which yelled "Heil Schuschnigg" today would thunder "Heil Hitler" tomorrow.

Stefan Zweig

#29. I can't compete and when I do, the rules of engagement change in the middle of the game. I'll let the powers that be vanquish themselves and return in three to five years to sift through the remains.

Ayn Rand

#30. Among living artists, George Condo may be the most embraced by the powers that be.

Jerry Saltz

#31. The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Greg Boyle

#32. We need to make sure that the powers that be know that arts education is as vital and as important as geography and arithmetic. You know, it is a part of the spiritual and the soulful experience and expression of being human and it is a necessity, as necessary as water, as breathing air.

Rosie O'Donnell

#33. I had yet to convince the powers-that-be that I was mentally stable. I knew something they didn't; I hadn't ever been mentally stable, and it was unlikely I ever would be.

Pippa DaCosta

#34. Might as well go out flipping the bird to the powers that be killing us.

Rachel Caine

#35. The powers that be not only try to control events,
but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.

Michael Parenti

#36. They say that man is mighty,
He governs land and sea,
He wields a mighty sceptre,
O'er lesser powers that be.

William Ross Wallace

#37. If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets.

Maynard James Keenan

#38. Our freedom of speech is freedom or death,
We got to fight the powers that be!

Chuck D

#39. When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.

Beau Willimon

#40. [H]is 'philosophy' seemed to consist of anything that would be particularly annoying to the powers that be without being so shocking that they would fire him. He got the reputation among the students as an original and a rebel without having to pay the penalty for actually being either.

Orson Scott Card

#41. The whole 'serious artist' thing is very damaging. The powers that be will steer you towards your own demise. One thing I've learned is that it's not very glamourous, and my problems are no different from anybody else's.

Dave Gahan

#42. I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it. You know who else was kind of "divisive" in terms of challenging the status quo and the powers-that-be of his day? Jesus Christ.

Ann Coulter

#43. So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us.

Ali Smith

#44. Let's be honest. The powers that be all of a sudden realize that there's a lot of money to be made from the Latino market. It all comes down to economics. That's what's happening. So what! We're in style. I mean, that's silly, but I'm taking full advantage of that.

Paula Garces

#45. The great masses always and at once respond to the force of gravity in the direction of the powers that be.

Stefan Zweig

#46. I'm a product of its [american] teaching, of its thinking, of its -isms, of its religion, of its education. I am conditioned, raised and developed by America; I am America. And as it changes, my thoughts also change. Because no matter what I believe, what the powers-that-be believe will affect me.

Erykah Badu

#47. I squinted at the clock, sighing when I realized it was only 7 A.M. "Christ. Do you think the powers that be would mind if I asked them to make sure the next apocalypse takes place later in the day? Maybe around teatime?"
"Good luck with that.

Allison Pang

#48. I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.

Abbie Hoffman

#49. I reject the concept that comic books in movies are a genre. I have been fighting that for many years, with the powers-that-be in Hollywood.

Michael Uslan

#50. I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It's a challenge to the powers that be. It's saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.

Alan Lightman

#51. A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence ... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.

Robert Motherwell

#52. The fact is that all the important political philosophers and scientists from the great Aristotle on, with the exception of those of the French Enlightenment and Mill, have sided with the powers that be.

Mario Bunge

#53. The apostle enters upon his subject thus - Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; for there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained of God.

Jonathan Mayhew

#54. It's very much a back and forth conversation between the fans and the writers, between the writers and the powers that be. Their opinions, especially when expressed online or via correspondence, are important and are taken into consideration.

Wentworth Miller

#55. I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

Abbie Hoffman

#56. Democracy has a habit of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the powers-that-be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers-that-ought-to-be

James Russell Lowell

#57. I was coming to be an adult, the AIDS epidemic happened. Moving to New York, watching that unfold, and watching the activism around that ... it was complete chaos of life, and then this horrific non-response from the powers that be. There was a lot of misery and sadness tied up in that.

Kelly Reichardt

#58. Alas, I soon grew disillusioned, concluding that economics was largely a form of intellectual prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear. Whatever

Max Tegmark

#59. A Christian can believe that God 'ordained' the 'powers that be' - including political rulers and slaveholders - for purposes too deep for us to understand fully, and that while they last we must provisionally accept them; but that they were not meant to last forever.

Joseph Sobran

#60. I kinda went back to that period between '88 and '94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

Brian McKnight

#61. The powers that be are trying to meld, shape, and corral the culture of hip-hop into another speaking voice for the government.

Chuck D

#62. Inevitably those remarks will suggest that the member of a mature scientific community is, like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be.

Thomas S. Kuhn

#63. The powers that be don't want athletes or boxers to become as smart as they are.

Bernard Hopkins

#64. The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate.

Robert A. Heinlein

#65. I always feel like hard work leads the way, and from there, I leave it up to the powers that be.

James Wolk

#66. Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.

Nadine Gordimer

#67. As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

Julie Burchill

#68. When we approach love and creativity with the level of conviction that the powers-that-be in the world today are approaching hatred and destruction, then and only then will we have a chance.

Marianne Williamson

#69. For a woman to direct a movie in Hollywood, she has to go through so many layers of rejection by the powers that be - I suppose including myself - that it is harder to get to that point. So you can't just create something. And I think there is a whole unconscious mountain.

Amy Pascal

#70. Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

Bill McKibben

#71. Economics was largely a form of intellectual prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear.

Max Tegmark

#72. I would love to do some straight drama. A lot of times it's not up to the actor, it's up to the producer. It's up to the powers that be.

Lea Salonga

#73. The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.

Cornel West

#74. Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#75. Oh, and she told me that men want only one thing.
And on that note, I must give praise and thanks to the powers that be. I don't want much else from them either.

Darynda Jones

#76. We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be.

Matt Drudge

#77. Even when other powers have been lost and people may not even be able to understand language, they will nearly always recognize and respond to familiar tunes. And not only that. The tunes may carry them back and may give them memory of scenes and emotions otherwise unavailable for them.

Oliver Sacks

#78. The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.

James Hutton

#79. There will be something anguish or elation that is peculiar to this day alone. I rise from sleep and say: hail to the morning! come down to me, my beautiful unknown.

Jessica Powers

#80. When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights. The people can act only by their agents and, within the powers conferred upon them, their acts must be considered as the acts of the people.

John Marshall

#81. The logic of war seems to be if the belligerent can fight, he will fight. That leaders will not surrender until surrender is academic. How is a national leader to explain the sacrifice of so much for nothing?

Thomas Powers

#82. There are two types of visions. Those that will happen no matter what, and those that can be stopped. Now more than ever, I wish I could tell them apart.

Emlyn Chand

#83. I hadn't hold out much hope for myself; if my counterpart existed, he'd be amazingly talented to make up for my shortcoming, and that would condemn me to a life of living in his shadows; or he'd match my feeble powers and be so weak that we'd barely sense each other.

Joss Stirling

#84. I've always been a massive fan of Batman. He didn't have any powers, so it meant that anyone could be Batman.

Erin Richards

#85. It had to be U. U. was the only town I could still bear, the one spot in the atlas I'd already absorbed head-on. When you take too many of your critical hits in one place, that place can no longer hurt you.

Richard Powers

#86. It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a "natural right" to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.

William Ernest Hocking

#87. Secrets, like tyrants, have influence that extends far beyond their own thrones. To silence their oppressive powers, they must be uncrowned.

Ina Catrinescu

#88. You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.

Robert Greene

#89. You don't know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don't know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty!

Gustav Landauer

#90. It seemed to me that half of life's problems would be solved if one of us had a vagina.

Richard Powers

#91. My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.

Kevin Powers

#92. It is not sufficient for the young to devote their enthusiasm, their courage, their ambition, their self-sacrifice to the great ideas of the time; the young must not only preserve but increase their powers if they are to be really equal to their eternal task: that of drawing the age in advance.

Ellen Key

#93. You've gained some powers by your entrance into other dimensions and you use them to attack others or to make others miserable, then power reverses on you and it pulls you apart because it's not supposed to be used that way.

Frederick Lenz

#94. The freedom and human capacities of individuals must be developed to their maximum but individual powers must be linked to democracy in the sense that social betterment must be the necessary consequence of individual flourishing.

Henry Giroux

#95. What should be targeted is a concept of organic, and not just mechanic, democracy that preserves the rule of law, separation of powers, and that is participatory and pluralistic.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

#96. Most would think that I'm a god with every reason to be happy. But I'm a mistake God made. Too much power doesn't create happiness. It steals it. To have it all means there's no struggle and without having to pay a price, nothing has value. I wasn't gifted with powers. I was cursed with them.

Sarah Noffke

#97. I say, that Power must never be trusted without a check.

John Adams

#98. We set ourselves to achieve a society that would be maximally tolerant. But that resolve not only gives maximum scope to the activities of those who have set themselves to achieve the maximally intolerant society. It also ... paralyses our powers of resistance to them.

David Stove

#99. The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.

Stendhal

#100. I understood that 'The Yellow Birds' would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.

Kevin Powers