Power calls to those who are hungry for power, and there are hungry idiots everywhere.

The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.

We have a scanty notion of justice and the obligations of rule involve little more than inventing new terrors by which we may cow and control others. Power, I think, is a habit as terrible as the potion I must now sip in order to sustain myself. It feeds upon itself. It is a hungry beast, devouring those who would possess it and those who hate it—devouring even those who own it.

Sometimes wealth and power merely created the desire for more of the same.

Power intoxicates those who hold it.

But when we crave power over life — endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality — then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

Power as the pursuit of more power inevitably founders in the void that lies beyond itself.

I want power. I suppose that's the story of my life - seeking power.

Everybody wants power. Power in some form or other. [...] Some people want power to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in persecuting words, twisting them, molding them, torturing them to obey you.

As power begets power and competition becomes more ruthless, the appetites of the wealthy become more extravagant and the excluded become more desperate. The growing gap erodes trust and institutional legitimacy, which in turn compels an ever greater diversion of resources to security measures — from car alarms and security guards to police and prisons.

The man afflicted by hunger for power or money for its own sake is just that: afflicted. He is tormented by incessant desires for more without cause. He is the most likely to wear a social mask to succeed, and thus he is always unsure of himself and his life, the deep tear inside always causing him to obsess about how to get more, why he doesn't have it already, and whom he will have to please or become in order to get it.

Power power, everybody like wants power

Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power.

Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival.