William Greider Quotes

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

And, you know, money is - the money edge is really dangerous to democracy. Because what you have right now - people have said to me that, look, you'll always be outspent, so how can you ever win?

It's obscene how money is driving politics.

As a lawyer, as a former prosecutor, and as a son and grandson of foreign-service officers who tried to represent American democracy in foreign and dangerous places, the idea that this crowd of crooked fossil-fuel types is able to take over and run our democracy like we are a banana republic - I find that repellent.

Money is influential in Congress, but votes will kick money’s ass any time they come up against each other.

Money has become much, much too important in the election process. I felt that way when I had no money, and I feel that way when I do have money.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

The rich don't win elections. They support the money, but what percentage of America are rich? What is it, 2 percent? But they all have one vote.

There is so much we don't know about Facebook. We know we have a corporate monopoly that has repeated serious violations that are threatening our democracy.

Talking to Republicans who aren't leaders - that's not very difficult both on anti-trust and on campaign finance reform. I think it's a lot more complicated when you talk to highly funded leaders - that's the innate, deeply problematic part of our politics.

Show me a supposedly 'unfixable' problem in Washington, and I'll show you the political corruption standing in the way.

The power of incumbency and the power of money is just overwhelming.

I find the Democratic party overall, on a macro level, to be institutionally corrupt.

I really don't think we've become a plutocracy, but I worry about the enormous influence that money has in a democracy such as ours.

Money greases the wheel of American democracy and corrupts it all.

Money is at the root of most that is wrong in American politics.

It's a big and growing problem, the amount of power possessed by Google and Facebook. President Eisenhower said it about the military-industrial complex. They pose a grave threat to our democracy.

If you want to go around saying that giving women the vote wrecked the country and still be taken seriously, it helps to be handing out $100 bills.

I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.

It is part of our political thinking that democracy is a battle of ideas.

Pressure and protest is fine, but using fear and threats to force politicians to sing to a certain tune will be the death of our democracy.

Federal system is at the heart of Indian democracy but UPA is adamant to break the nation by breaking the federal structure for their vested interests. It's a conspiracy to grab power through the backdoor.

In whose delusional mind is democracy made 'better' by allowing wealthy people to control more of it?

Politicians don't want democracy here in America, why would they want it in the Middle East?