#power

Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own. ↗

— Joss Whedon

#power #wisdom #nature

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

I can bench press steam, but not fog. I just have to wait until the fog lifts itself.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#bench-press #fog #natural #nature #passion

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. ↗

— David Mitchell

#violence #war #nature

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding ↗

— Jacob Bronowski

#knowledge #nature #power #understanding #wisdom

Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil. ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#power #wisdom-in-war #nature

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#power #courage

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