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.

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

I wanted power so badly that I had convinced myself I already had too much of it, that I was an evil schemer who might destroy everyone around me through the poison seeping out of my pores. I was appalled by my own majesty. I wanted someone to betray.

The significant point is that people unfit for freedom — who cannot do much with it — are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have-not" type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power. Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: to have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.
To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.

I want people to see their own power.

But I want power and renown so that I may help other people,” you say. What do you mean by “help”? Can you really give them happiness and satisfaction — things that are in their own spheres of power, not yours?

The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation.

I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.

Only fools want to be great.

You love and worship power. Why? To any thinking mind it should be clear that such a lust intrinsically is, and forever must by its very nature be, futile. For, even if any one of you could command the entire material Universe, what good would it do him? None. What would he have? Nothing. Not even the satisfaction of accomplishment, for that lust is in fact insatiable — it would then turn upon itself and feed upon itself.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

You desire power only for that most selfish of all ends, and therefore you know no boundaries in the seeking and the gaining of it.

Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power.

Some people just seemed to want to display their power by defining what others could or couldn’t do.