William S. Burroughs Quotes

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny…

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.

We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course. Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.

A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.

Dictators have the power and funds to hire sycophants who encourage them in their delusions.

If you ignore the murdering and the conniving, Francis Underwood is an effective politician.

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Huey Long’s methods outdid the good he did with the results.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

Bull permeates everything.... American people think politics and politicians are full of baloney.

If you do not know how to lie, cheat and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.

... immoral, evil and a demagogue.

I have the disease called politics.

Politicians need three things to be successful: money, unchecked ego, and sociopathic drive.

The only way to survive among the evil and corrupt is to be even more wicked and more corrupt than they are!

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesize and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies.

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

… politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia

Politics has become beyond acceptable when it comes to humanity. People are just frozen in falsehood.

In Indian politics, deception seems a byword. I'll have none of that.

I really can't abide conspiracy theories, because I believe that everything in the world stems from idiocy and incompetence. That's certainly true of most of what's happened in Russia under Putin.

'House Of Cards' with Kevin Spacey - I love how it portrays humans in power as just like the rest of us - but even worse.

Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.