Quotes About Power

I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad.

In the years leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking about defense was driven by ideas that regarded successful military operations as ends in themselves rather than just one instrument of power that must be coordinated with others to achieve - and sustain - political goals.

An overview of all wars since the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 suggests that most of them would have been greatly reduced in severity, or perhaps not even fought at all, without fiat money.

Between 'The Godfather,' 'The Sopranos,' 'Goodfellas,' and the countless other mob stories that have been both critically and commercially acclaimed over the years, it's not hard to see why a game like 'Mafia Wars' works.

Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.

The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime President.

The greatly increased consumption of alcoholic beverages is very largely a direct result of the increased purchasing power created by wartime expenditures.

To invent a war means that you've become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not all of the Bill of Rights.

I am, by instinct, wary of revolutions. The gathering of the masses fills me with trepidation.

Bob Gates has unusual standing in the debate about the Obama administration's foreign policy: He was defense secretary for both a hawkish President George W. Bush and a wary President Obama. He understood Bush's desire to project power and Obama's skepticism.

Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.

I figure I'll be champ for about ten years and then I'll let my brother take over - like the Kennedys down in Washington.

Why did I choose Washington among offers from other cities? Because it is the capital of the world.

Rich people march on Washington every day.

I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too.

If you can't be a populist in Arkansas, you ain't going to be a populist in Washington.

I was at the 1976 Republican Convention in Kansas City. I was running 'Nobody for President' at the time. I printed up these press releases and handed them out to the crowd at the Kemper Arena. 'Nobody keeps campaign promises.' 'Nobody lowers your taxes.' 'Nobody should have that much power.' 'Nobody is in Washington working for you.'

Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up.

Though many of the poor have come to see the affluent middle class as its enemy, that class actually stands between the poor and the real powers in this society - the administrative octopus with its head in Washington, the conglomerates, the military complex.

Bush wasn't elected, he was selected - selected by five judges up in Washington who voted along party lines.

In Washington, I found myself as a 31-year-old in a room with the president, vice president, and secretaries of state and defense, and I was unfazed by it. But get me around a rock star I grew up with and I have trouble completing sentences.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.