Famous quotes containing the words electric power, phase, electric and/or power:
“Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I had let preadolescence creep up on me without paying much attention—and I seriously underestimated this insidious phase of child development. You hear about it, but you’re not a true believer until it jumps out at you in the shape of your own, until recently quite companionable child.”
—Susan Ferraro (20th century)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.... The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)