power have very negative effects on a person’s character. Power reduces empathy, makes us hypocritical, and causes us to dehumanize others.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

44. But for most people it is through the power process — having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal — that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc.6

But so long as power remains by itself on one side, and enlightenment and wisdom isolated on the other, wise men will rarely think of great things, princes will more rarely carry out fine actions, and the people will continue to be vile, corrupt, and unhappy.

In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary.

Power dies, power goes under and gutters out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive. As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever existed, and it returns. I never made the mistake of thinking that I owned my own strength, that was my secret. And so I never was alone in my failures. I was never to blame entirely when all was lost, when my desperate cures had no effect on the suffering of those I loved. For who can blame a man waiting, the doors open, the windows open, food offered, arms stretched wide? Who can blame him if the visitor does not arrive.

A power struggle collapses when you withdraw your energy from it. Power struggles become uninteresting to you when you change your intention from winning to learning about yourself.

I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corrupt-able. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Power corrupts — that has been said and written so often that it has become a cliché. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, he must conceal those traits that might make others reluctant to give it to him, that might even make them refuse to give it to him. Once the man has power, it is no longer necessary for him to hide those traits.

People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.

Power is lonely. Power segregates. God must be the most lonely entity in the universe. No person is more lonely than a judge. No person needs a friend more. The boss was once a worker with many friends. Now he exists apart from them. He is lonely. Some of his old friends hate him. Others fear him. The parent is always separated from the child. Parents and children can be friendly. They can love each other. But rarely can they be friends, for they are never peers, which is the foundation of all friendships. Power, real or imagined, physical or psychological, isolates.