The Powers That Be Quotes

1. "I am an old, old friend of Aaron Sorkin's, who is the executive producer and writer. He had been talking about doing a political show for a long time and I had been interested in it for a long time. The moment I became available, he called me last year and asked me if I wanted to do it and then I just had to audition for the powers that be, and I got it."
Author: Bradley Whitford

2. "Oh, and she told me that men want only one thing. And on that note, I must give praise and thanks to the powers that be. I don't want much else from them either."
Author: Darynda Jones

3. "Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year."
Author: David Davis

4. "Don't Go With The Flow. The Powers That Be Turn The Taps"
Author: Dean Cavanagh

5. "You look concerned," Roshaun said from behind her. Dairine scowled over her shoulder at him. "The whole universe is in danger," she said, "and we're not sure how to save it, assuming it can be saved. One of the Powers That Be has stuffed secret messages into my brain without telling me. And a friend of mine who happens to be my wizard's manual is being reprogrammed with software that even these guys haven't had time to beta test! Wow, Roshaun, why would I need to be concerned?" Roshaun glanced at the ground. Another chair appeared for him, a slight distance from Dairine's. He lowered himself into it, stretching out his legs with a sigh. "Sarcasm," he said, "Amusing, if ineffective."
Author: Diane Duane

6. "Growing up, my guardians refused to tell me what horny meant. As I got a little older, they forbid me to use it, along with any other word that was remotely sexual in nature. That pretty much set the tone of my whole young adulthood. I swore that when I grew up I would use that word as often and whenever possible as my way of rebelling against the powers that be. So in honor of that vow to myself: Horny, horny, horny!"
Author: Ella Dominguez

7. "How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?"
Author: Joel Salatin

8. "I am aware always that the powers that be are so strong, we can not go headlong to pit our forces, it would be suicidal, so we had that position. Which Lenin himself said that 'it is not only foolish to launch an armed revolution but it is a leftist criminal adventurism when the people are not ready to support it.' The people are not ready, they don't even understand what we are talking about.. . . Yes, even socialism is not yet understood by people, much less communism. And the rich are very afraid of communism because it means confiscation of their wealth and liquidation of their lives."
Author: Luis Taruc

9. "If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets."
Author: Maynard James Keenan

10. "Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter."
Author: Nadine Gordimer

11. "When I touched that boy, I felt something. Something awful. Something I can't describe.""We all felt it," Nick said."You may have felt it, but I caused it." Then both his eyes seemed to go far away. "Something changed out there. I don't know what it was, but something in the world changed because that kid didn't deserve what I did to him—and the powers that be know that I did it." Nick watched as a tear fell from his Everlost eye and disappeared through the living world table."What if," said Nick, not even sure what he was going to say yet, "what if you were that kid and you were told you could change the world, but you would have to sacrifice yourself to do it?"Clarence chuckled at the thought. "I believe that question was already asked a long time ago, and that creepy kid did not look anything like Jesus to me.""But you do think that something changed. . . .""I don't know whether it's good or bad.""What if it's neither?" suggested Nick. "What if we get to make it one or the other?"
Author: Neal Shusterman

12. "The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them."
Author: Neal Stephenson

13. "Might as well go out flipping the bird to the powers that be killing us."
Author: Rachel Caine

14. "We know that's the bottom line: if money is made, the powers that be pay attention."
Author: Regina King

15. "Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true."
Author: Sarah Schulman

16. "I had learned and written too much history not to know that the great masses always and at once respond to the force of gravity in the direction of the powers that be. I knew that the same voices which yelled "Heil Schuschnigg" today would thunder "Heil Hitler" tomorrow."
Author: Stefan Zweig

17. "We could see other fires--great leaping bonfires as well as cooking fires--all the way down the beach to the twinkling metropolis of Joyland. They made a lovely chain of burning jewelry. Such fires are probably illegal in the twenty-first century; the powers that be have a way of outlawing many beautiful things made by ordinary people. I don't know why that should be, I only know it is."
Author: Stephen King

18. "Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be."
Author: Sydney J. Harris

19. "Therefore, I feel convinced that any political picture can be changed to suit the needs of the powers that be."
Author: Thor Heyerdahl

20. "All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers."
Author: Wendell Berry

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