WILLIE BROWN

Mayors are judged by results.

In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.

Any politician that can’t take people’s money and then turn around and screw them, doesn’t belong in the business.

Being mayor of San Francisco is dealing with pot holes and dog doo.

I’ve always operated on the theory that I’d better be better and cleaner than my white counterparts.

If you use power too loosely, you lose power.

The Ayatollah of the Assembly.

In this crazy political business, at least in our times, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.

Go back to the kitchen.

In Sacramento you simply had to think about what the law ought to be and leave it to someone else to implement. In San Francisco, you hear about it the next day.

Politics is my life. If I had a hobby, it would be politics.

Street lights, dog-doo and parking meters are not my cup of tea.

There wasn't a kid in my neighborhood who knew his dad. My mother did it for us, and she still thinks I'm an underachiever.

We build more prisons than we do classrooms; the quality of the prisons is better than the quality of the classrooms.

Do not completely defeat your opponents. Leave your opponents some dignity with which to walk off the field. They have been elected by some people and you have no right to dismember them… When you do that, you lose all semblance of leadership.

That's garbage. Why can't they catch me in a sex scandal. I could use some good publicity.

Everybody in politics writes a book and the books are dull—almost as dull as the people who wrote them.

Flamboyance causes people to notice you—particularly press people.

Nobody with the name of Barack Obama will win anything.

No one is ready to be President. If you end up with the title, you adjust to the position.

To win [elections] in this country these days you've got to campaign down to a 13-year-old's level of mental development.

Caen's San Francisco may not be the city we remember, but it is the city we want to remember.

The public still ultimately determines what happens to you politically, by virtue of the casting of their vote ... and you cannot ever predict what will move the public in one direction or another.

Dressing is a matter of taste, and I've met very few Republicans with good taste.

Circumstances in the world of politics contribute substantially to whether or not you can be successful.