Daily Inspiration Quote by F. Murray Abraham

Power, in F. Murray Abraham's telling, isn’t a trophy; it’s an accusation. The line begins with a plain observation - “People desire power” - then immediately swerves into a refusal to romanticize it: “I don’t know why.” That feigned puzzlement reads less like ignorance than like side-eye. He’s skeptical of the appetite itself, as if the hunger for control is already a kind of moral or psychological tell.

The real bite lands in the phrase “It seems to me it implies a hugely superior intellect.” Abraham frames power not as brute force or charisma but as a self-mythology: the belief that you’re smarter than everyone else and therefore entitled to steer them. That’s the subtext doing the work. He’s pointing at the quiet elitism that often underwrites authority - the assumption that leadership requires distance from “the populace,” a word that carries its own chill. It’s not “people” anymore; it’s a mass to be managed.

Coming from an actor, the quote also functions as a backstage note about performance. Abraham has spent a career inhabiting figures who crave domination or recognition, and he’s describing power as a role that demands a particular mask: superiority. The intent isn’t to explain politics; it’s to puncture the glamour around ambition. Power, here, is less a responsibility than a psychological alibi - a story the powerful tell themselves to justify separating from everyone else.