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Phrase: With great power comes great responsibility
I’d like you to read the following sentence aloud and then pause and let it hang in the air for a moment.
With great power comes great responsibility.
What does this phrase mean to you?
What do you imagine when you read those words?
Do you have an image of a great world leader?
Winston Churchill may come to mind.
Winston Churchill was a man who, through his willpower, picked up a nation and enabled its people to have the power and the will to fight for their very survival.
Perhaps you have the image of a leader in the world of business.
With all the news about Internet powerhouses such as Google and Facebook, it may be easy to imagine Mark Zuckerberg holding access to millions, no, billions of people in his hand – able to win hearts and influence elections at will.
Perhaps you think of the average Joe or Jane.
The people who wake up every morning do the heavy lifting of life, such as cleaning toilets, riding packed trains to work and dealing with overt and covert sexual harassment in unfavourable working conditions.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Who do you think of?
I’d like you to think of yourself.
Even though, at times, it may not feel like it, you are the one with great power, and you are the one with great responsibility.
It was the British people who won the war against Hitler, not Churchill alone.
It’s the people who control the Internet, not any one company.
We, the regular everyday people, are ultimately responsible for what happens in this world and what we leave for future generations.
Power and responsibility go hand in hand.
With great power comes great responsibility.
It doesn’t matter if Superman’s Uncle Ben, Voltaire or someone else said it.
All that matters is how you interpret it and what you do with your interpretation.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 69.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.