Michael Wolff Quotes

Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party.

I didn't get to the Senate by accident.

I had dreams of high political office.

Politics changes lives. You would expect me, as a politician, to say that. But I don't say it as a politician: I say it as someone whose own life was changed.

I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.

There's nothing in my background that would have said I was destined to be a senior politician.

I love politics, but I wouldn't want to be involved in it. Too little money, too much work!

There is absolutely no way that I would enter that world. I would never run for office.

My belief is the majority of people in politics are just interested in pursuing this career in politics, and doing what's necessary to get themselves re-elected. And if that happens to coincide with the public good, great. But if it doesn't, the public good loses out.

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.

Newt Gingrich has certainly seen his own empire rise - and fall.

The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.

All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainty, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.

I am no longer a political accident.

[Warren] Harding didn't like being a Senator; he liked being in the Senate.

When I was elected at age 27 to the New York City Council I immediately became Minority Leader. I was the only Republican.

I would rather have a full term in the Senate—a place in which I would feel more consciously able to discharge the duties required, and where there is more chance to make a reputation, and less danger of losing it than four years of the presidency.

Lunched with Jack Kennedy, the new Senator from Massachusetts. He has the making of a first-class Senator or a first-class fascist.

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

In politics if the people give you popularity, the other politicians observe and give you power.

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics, is still the greatest and most honorable adventure.

A man’s got to walk if he is going to be in politics.

More than Nixon or any other 20th-century president, Clinton has devoted his life to winning and keeping the presidency.

As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, it is still possible to progress if not from a log cabin at least from obscurity to the White House. It is also rare.

When I was a young man, I used to dream maybe someday I could be an alderman. Instead of that I became an attorney general, a senator, a vice president, a Democratic nominee.