This republic has been much more powerful than it is at present, as it is still likelier, to sink than increase in its dominions.

-Addison,Joseph
  On Venice. Remarks on Several parts of Italy.

No wonder the really powerful men in our society, whether politicians or scientists, hold writers in contempt.Theydoit becausetheyget no evidence from modern literature that anybody is thinking about any significant question.

-Bellow, Saul
  Interview in The Paris Review, no.37, winter issue.

As I was saying when I was interrupted, it is a powerful hard thing to please all of the people all of the time.

-Connor, Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra
  On resuming his Cassandra column in the Daily Mirror, Sep, after the end of  World War II.

Supponam igitur non optimum Deum, fontem veritatis, sed genium aliquum malignum, eundemque summe potentem et callidum, omnem suam industriam in eo posuisse, ut me falleret. I will suppose then, not that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth; but that there is an evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent, and does his utmost to deceive me.

-Descartes, Rene¤
Meditationes,1st meditation (translated by G E M Anscombe and Peter Geach).

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as isnatural, was dueto the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
Selected Essays (1932),'The Metaphysical Poets'.

Would you rather have butter or guns? †preparedness makes us powerful.Butter merely makes us fat. See Goebbels 359:7.

-Goering, HermannWilhelm
  Speech, Hamburg.

Non enim quo quisque ditior sive potentior, ideo et melior: fortunae illud est, hoc virtutis. To be wealthieror more powerful isnot necessarily tobe worthier: the former are products of fortune, the latter stems from virtue.

-He¤  lo|«  se
c.1135  First letter to Peter  Abelard.

'It's powerful,' he said. 'What?' 'That one drop of Negro bloodöbecause just one drop of black blood makes a man coloured. One dropöyou are a Negro!'

-Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston
  Simple Takes a Wife.

It is now apparent that this great, this powerful, this formidablekingdomisconsidered onlyas a province of a despicable electorate.

-Pitt,William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder
  Speech to the House of Commons,10 Dec.

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

-Siegel,Jerome
Introduction for the Superman radio serial. Quoted in Time,14 Mar1988.

Merely to adopt the more powerful assumption is no more than to assume the more powerful conclusion.

-Solow, Robert M
  In theJournal of Economic Perspectives, 8:53.