David Letterman Quotes

I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.

Obama's capitalism is a capitalism of connections.

I've always been, with acting, very hesitant to get myself into situations where I would be accused of nepotism.

Most of us pay some sort of price for screwing up. Quayle never has. His high school guidance counselor told him his grades were too low for admission to DePauw University, where his grandfather was a trustee and major donor, but he got in anyway. In college he flunked the departmental exam that was supposed to be a prerequisite to graduation, but he graduated anyway. Although it was 1969, the height of the Vietnam War, a year when more than a quarter million young men were drafted and other Indianans were being told it would take years to get into the National Guard, Quayle landed a spot in a week flat, after a retired Guard general who worked for his family made a call on his behalf. Quayle was rejected by Indiana University Law School, but he got in anyway- under an affirmative action program, after he visited the dean of admissions, a Republican judge in a city (Indianapolis) where Quayle’s grandfather owned the newspaper. (Soon thereafter, the grandfather made a large contribution to the law school.) Quayle was indifferent law student, but he got a job in the state attorney general’s office anyway. (His father made a few calls.) He was a twenty-nine year old employee of his father’s paper, but he got elected to Congress anyway, with the help of the paper and his own good looks. He was a poor congressman, but he got elected to Senate anyway, in the 1980 Reagan landslide. Two years later the DePauw faculty voted against giving him an honorary degree, but he got it anyway. He was a mediocre senator, but Bush put him on the national ticket anyway. He blew the debate, but he’ll probably be elected vice president anyway. At this rate he’ll be president by cherry blossom time.

We had less qualified trumping more qualified people just because of their political connections.

I'm not going to deny that knowing someone in high places can sometimes get the job done. That's the name of the game. A son or daughter of someone famous will get a break. But once they're in there, they're on their own.

He who has the judge for his father goes into court with an easy mind.

I love Romney. It is not his fault that he is the son of a successful governor and makes $20 million a year.

In life it wasn't what you know, but who you know. I had people who were trying to buy teams and had they bought the teams, I would have gotten to coach because they wanted me to coach. But the people who have the teams hire their friends.

I am criticized for getting jobs because of my name, but I only use it when I have to.

Did any agents ever put Diane Ladd up for some of the great parts, even though she always got great reviews? No! But do they put up the girlfriend of the studio executive who's gonna do them a favor later? You betcha.

Human connection is the way things work. It's like a patronage system. You know somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows somebody, and he knows the district governor, and it's okay.

Too often, people get jobs based on who they know - not what they know.

President Junior is the mascot of crony capitalism.

Government runs by clout. That's how it runs, by clout.

To enjoy a prince's favor does not rule out the possibility of merit, but neither does it argue for its existence.

It’s good to have a good friend in power.

I have, from the beginning, been opposed to Trump hiring any of his relatives. Americans don't like that; I don't like that. That's the one fascist thing he's done. Hiring his kids.

Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.

The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son - it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.

Crony capitalism is not capitalism - it is cronyism.

Star kids always get an upper hand at the start of their career. People in the industry often know them from the time they were toddlers, so they show support to them when their film is about to release.

It is not a shocker to me that a film went out of my hands, not because I was not credible, but because I was not so-and-so's daughter or sister or dating so-and-so.

Ask Frank Stallone how far your name gets you.

My kids have been around politics since they were little.