Political Power Dynamics Quotes

I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.

When a third party's demands become popular enough, they are appropriated by one or both of the major parties and the third party disappears. Third parties are like bees: Once they have stung, they die.

Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.

What I write about is how much influence it's had in things like state legislatures and governorships and congressional races. The other thing that's even more important in the long run is that very extreme money has affected the ecosystem of ideology in the country.

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party's cause, you're going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That's the price you pay for whoring yourself out.

As a historian, I'm sceptical about conspiracy theories because the world is far too complicated to be managed by a few billionaires drinking scotch behind some closed doors. But I do think that the voters are correct in sensing that they're really losing power. And in reaction, they give the system an angry kick.

Politics is a fascinating game, because politics is government. It is the art of government.

My thesis is that government is not, in fact, broken. It's just listening to the wrong people, and it's listening to all of this quiet influence. So it's a very robust operation that operates kind of under the surface.

In the old days, money controlled politics. Today, information controls politics. So I think with the advent of the Internet, the power of wealth has been diminished. Look up all the people you know who spent millions and millions of dollars and fell short.

I suppose people also have to be a little more careful or circumspect if they're going to leverage their celebrity to promote their political aims. The problem is that politics is about the accretion of power, and it's very difficult not to get giddy with power.

I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player.

If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference.

Look at the number of cop shows and lawyer shows and forensics shows... I think there could be room for two quite different examinations of the same political office.

Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

Political men, like goats, usually thrive best among inequalities.

I think we are seeing the absolute and utter collapse of male politicians in this [U.S] country and we're seeing what the underpinnings of the power structure are, which are sexist underpinnings.

It is sometimes easier to form a party than to attain by degrees the head of a party already formed.

In my own experience as president of Brazil I observed first hand many of the trends that Nam identifies in this book, but he describes them in a way that is as original as it is delightful to read. All those who have power-or want it-should read this book.

The way that things happen in Egypt, the government - or the head of the government - don't get personally involved. They were always goonies and agents and people who do that kind of work for the government either by direct instructions or because they think that they're doing something good or they want to be on the good side of the government.

Politics can not only be drudgery and Captain Queeg with the balls in his hands.

Sovereignty and the right to rule cannot be conferred on anyone no matter who ... as a result of an academic discussion. Sovereignty is acquired by force and power and violence.

Power is a drug on which the politicians are hooked. They buy it from the voters, using the voters' own money.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.