Power Topics

The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: “his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

Falling in love with a United States Senator is a splendid ordeal. One is nestled snugly into the bosom of power but also placed squarely in the hazardous path of exposure.
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)

I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of the picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, “What outside territories do I want to take for myself?”... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler’s point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it.
I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look’d in the glass, I was almost frighten’d at my own figure.
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)