#power

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#consumer #decadence #decadent #diginty #disempowerment

There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature. ↗

— H. Rider Haggard

#magic #magic-vs-nature #magic-vs-science #nature #power

When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough. ↗

— Criss Jami

#approval #authority #blanket #brute-force #brutes

Time: no start no end, the most powerful force in nature, killing more people than 100 atomic bombs, generating thoughts & ideas. Devil&Good ↗

— Rossana Condoleo

#time-creator #time-generator #time-management #time-passing #time-power

If we have received a precious gift from God, it is our imagination. When we tap into our powers of imagination, we are bombs of possibilities. ↗

— Hiroko Sakai

#gift #god #imagination #power-of-imagination #art

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#man #the-will-to-power #respect

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. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#love #power #death

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#injustice #may #must #never #powerless

When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch. ↗

— Bette Davis

#double-standards #empowerment #feminism #gender #hypocrisy

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill. ↗

— Kristin Cashore

#power #strong #unfair #weak #women