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Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.

Of all human inventions the organization, a machine constructed of people performing interdependent functions, is the most powerful.

If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.

The more we can organize, find and manage information, the more effectively we can function in our modern world.

The single hardest part of leading any organization is knowing what is going on. There's too much noise in the system, too much complexity: you absolutely depend on people speaking up and raising concerns.

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.

But you will understand by yourselves that the matter applies equally well to the organization of the officials of justice, of administrative officials, etc; these are likewise organized instruments of power in certain societies.

Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

I doubt there's any government in the world that guides itself primarily by strategy or conceptual documents or worldview. Anybody who has the reins of power has to look at practical limitations and tradeoffs - the fact that you can focus at most on one or two things at a time, that resources are limited.