Quotes About Power

To be fair, lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections.

The tension between isolationism and the global economy creates what George Kennan called "fateful alliances": multinational power blocs. We call them "New Empires" because they take on the qualities of empires. Federated and all-powerful, bureaucratic but decentralized, these superpower-style blocs of countries and corporations grow to dominate the world. They are often benevolent, but they are always despots.

Outside interests, from labor unions to large corporations, are influencing and distorting our government in the search for favorable policies.

We have focused on the buyers of influence (those outside special interests), but paid little heed to the sellers of influence—bureaucrats and politicians.

Hiring a lobbyist aligned with a powerful politician is more important than hiring a lobbyist with a certain expertise or experience. Hiring a former staff member or family member is better still.

Mark Hanna, who served as President William McKinley's chief fund-raiser. (Hanna once famously said, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is.")

The assumption is that we need to protect politicians from outside influences. But how about protecting ourselves from the politicians?

In his first eight years on the global lecture circuit, Bill had never been paid to speak in Nigeria. But once Hillary was appointed secretary of state, he booked two of his top three highest-paid speeches ever by traveling to Nigeria, pulling in a whopping $700,000 each.69

What Hunter Biden, the son of America's vice president, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (later to be secretary of state) were creating was an international private equity firm. It was anchored by the Heinz family alternative investment fund, Rosemont Capital.

In short, this is corruption by proxy. It is essentially a form of "political arbitrage," where friends and family members of powerful political figures have positioned themselves to serve as conduits or middle men between those seeking influence and those who possess political power.

From the White House to Capitol Hill, from the diplomatic corps to the national security establishment to the executive suites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, American elites have sold the rope that will hang us to Beijing.

A person can destroy me with two words. It can just be the way they say them, the inflection.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs - it sucks - it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. [...] Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles.

It both sustains and kills—like a God.

Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.

A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave.

successful humor breaks down the power structures that tend to inhibit tighter social bonds and interactions

In the sense that you're not at the centre of power, like a president or prime minister of a major power, everyone is marginalised my position doesn't isn't unique in that respect. I think there are different sorts of relevance in different contexts.

Not until Plato's Republic was a type of politician created who would no longer serve as a loudspeaker, but rather as a receiver of quiet ideas – with little success, as we know, as the introduction of the quiet politician is yet to come. It would be a contradiction in terms, for politics, as the art of what is possible in noise, remains assigned to the loud side of the phonotope

sensibilización de minorías demasiado pequeñas y, más aún, como censura permanente a través de la policía lingüística inquisitiva.

short, as soon as the polis had lost the power to persuade people to commit to it fully with their highest ambitions and willingness to serve, a cosmopolitan market of theory and ethics arose in which a postpolitical intelligentsia reoriented itself to the ideological needs of the defeated, or one could also say, of private persons. The trend toward empire and monarchy was part of the times.

Pensar sobre a roupa, sobre roupas, significa pensar sobre memória, mas também sobre poder e posse.

Her sense of humor went south about a minute after I tied her up.