Quotes About Power

In later decades, the role of the Vice President would be gradually and substantially enlarged—at the discretion of the President—but at the time of the 1960 election, that was where the office stood. No legislative powers, no executive powers, and obstacles, hitherto insurmountable obstacles, to obtaining any—except what the President might choose to give

Why political power? Because political power shapes all of our lives. It shapes your life in little ways that you might not even think about.

And, in fact, had Johnson's plan succeeded, in many ways it would indeed have been "just the way it was.

Robert A. Caro

strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies"—a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching.

Rowe was later to hear Johnson recounting the conversation to Richard Russell. "He said, 'Well, you know, Dick, I was really making some progress with Adlai. I took my knife and held it right against him. All of a sudden I felt some steel in my ribs and I looked around and Finnegan had a knife in my ribs.' He laughed, and Russell said, 'Finnegan is a pro,' and that was it.

A surprising number of representatives," the Saturday Evening Post reported, "knew his hat and coat, when it hangs on its accustomed peg in the House restaurant"—a discreet reference to the fact that many Congressmen checked to see that he was present before they entered the restaurant, lest they be forced to pay for their meals themselves.

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

On the rare occasions on which a movie was shown, there was as much suspense in the audience over whether the electricity would hold out to the end of the film as there was in the film itself.

When talking with older men, men who could help him, Lyndon Johnson "gave them," this aide says, "whatever they wanted to hear.

He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood," one student had said. "He was only interested in himself and what could help himself." The feeling in Washington was the same.

People are always asking me why I chose Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson to write about. Well, I must say I never thought of my books as the stories of Moses or Johnson. I never had the slightest interest in writing the life of a great man. From the very start, I thought of writing biographies as a means of illuminating the times of the men I was writing about and the great forces that molded those times—particularly the force that is political power.

I define personal power as a state of mind in which a person is confident he can handle whatever may come. This kind of power not only successfully deals with problems, challenges and adversity, it actually welcomes them, meets them head on, and is thankful for them. Personal power isn't the absence of fear. Even the most powerful people have fear. Personal power is the result of feeling fear, but not giving in to the fear.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.

Secrecy begets tyranny.

Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

I came, I saw, she conquered. The original Latin seems to have been garbled.

When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

A managed democracy is a wonderful thing... for the managers... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible'.

As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery.