Quotes About Power

Now even reformers needed political machines.

Nixon was becoming a discombobulated president, politically on the run. His interior secretary, Walter Hickel, posted a letter to the president that leaked to the Washington Star: "Youth in its protest must be heard." Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were all young people in their day, Hickel argued; their "protests fell on deaf ears and finally led to war." (The president's response was to bulldoze the White House tennis court, beloved of Hickel.)

With the best of intentions, the reformers conflated what savage cops did in the streets with the backroom deal-making that wired the convention for Hubert Humphrey—just as Mayor Daley's police tarred peaceful McCarthy campaign bureaucrats with the rampages of the revolutionary left.

Congressmen had a use for their very own son of a bitch.

How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

Presidents are also always storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies.

Nixonland is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompass the entire political culture of the United States. It would, in fact, for the next fifty years.

world run according to the Gospel of Richard Nixon, where good guys were always good no matter what they actually did, bad guys were always and everywhere ontologically evil, and no one will be safe until " 'we' crack down on 'them,' occasionally adopting their tactics.

Rockefeller needed Molitor.

Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness.

The task of defending capitalism was still important to leave to the capitalists.

An anti-politician is hardly an anti-politician once he starts winning and works to close the deal by working to sew up the Establishment.

This administration in Washington that's in power now clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need, but it's the most qualified to make the most central decisions for every American in every area.

Our goal is to displace the entrenched powers in Washington, restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government.

Who can be against progress, after all? But it's a fraudulent use of the word - because for the Progressive, progress is marked not be how free you are, but how much government can 'do' for you.

Go ahead, kill me! But live with this: All those people die! For the rest of your life, somewhere behind the feeds, that human part of you hiding down deep will always wonder how much pain you could have prevented if you hadn't been so weak!

I'm writing this story, not you, so shut up.

When believers allow sin and compromise to be in their lives, it drains away the power in the work of the Cross and the power of the Spirit that is resident in a believer's life.

There is no substitute for the Word of God — for the true power of the Gospel (see Romans 1:16). But neither is there a substitute for the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. In fact, these two go together as one. If the Spirit's presence and power are removed, all that's left is orthodoxy and religious works. But religion will never raise the dead, cast out demons, heal the sick, or turn cities and nations to Jesus Christ!

What happens when the Church ceases to stand for truth or to live holy lives separate from the world? When that type of wrong doctrine gains ascendancy, it produces a weak Church so contaminated with spiritual sickness that very little power remains in it.

Afterward, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends kept waiting for us to come up, but hey-when you are the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry. And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.

Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works. I am praying. I'm talking to you, right? Oh...yes. Good point. Amphitrite - incoming!

With great power... comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later.

Even strength must bow to wisdom sometimes.