Richard Crossman Quotes

President Nixon's motto was, if two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

Local government is a gamble that can have disastrous consequences when it fails.

We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for. I don't know if this man is really taking care of America. This government has been shameful.

What we are missing, utterly and completely, in this government is accountability.

Recalling our history which has been characterized by political and constitutional instability …

Mr. Jefferson has reason to reflect upon himself. How he will get rid of his remorse in his retirement, I know not. He must know that he leaves the government infinitely worse than he found it, and that from his own error or ignorance.

One of the best magistrates as minister, and a good sharp thief-taker for [foreign] secretary

All politicians make huge mistakes.

People always suffer for what governments have done.

We all make mistakes. In public life, we make them in public view.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.

Corruption is not the sole test of your worthiness to form the government.

Politics is awful.

The cover-up, more than the initial wrongdoing, is what is most likely to bring you down.

Government by three men in a room has turned New York State into a national symbol of governmental dysfunction. Enough is enough!

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.

Our government has become incompetent, unresponsive, corrupt. And that incompetence, ineptitude, lack of accountability is now dangerous.

I must confess the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.

People think that the politician is just part of a system, and whether they're lying or not doesn't matter.

The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong.