Concentration Of Power Quotes

“Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Acquisition, acquisition, acquisition, merger! Until there was only one business left in every field.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Geriatric or other life extension for the powerful poses a similar threat to a sentient species as that found historically in the dominance of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Both assume prerogatives of immortality, collecting more and more power with each passing moment. This is power which draws a theological aura about itself: the unassailable Law, the God-given mandate of the leader, manifest destiny. Power held too long within a narrow framework moves farther and farther away from the adaptive demands of changed conditions. The leadership grows ever more paranoid, suspicious of inventive adaptations to change, fearfully protective of personal power and, in the terrified avoidance of what it sees as risk, blindly leads its people into destruction.
―BuSab Manual”
― Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

“The American radical will fight privilege and power, whether it be inherited or acquired by any small group, whether it be political or financial or organized creed. He curses a caste system, aware that it exists despite all patriotic denials. He will fight conservatives, whether they are business or labor leaders. He will fight any concentration of power hostile to a broad, popular democracy, whether he finds it in financial circles or in politics.

The radical recognizes that constant dissension and conflict is and has been the fire under the boiler of democracy.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

“The size and scale of the problems facing mankind, and the fact of international communication and mutual economic dependence will remain, but the concentration of the power to deal with those issues must be seized from the hands of the imperialists and given to the people in their rich local, regional, and national variety.”
― David Gow, The Red Paper on Scotland