Joe Sacco Quotes

The permanent power brokers of this city are the columnists.

'Plutocracy.' It has a perfect nuance: chilly, inaccessible, icy-rich.

Having been a head of state gives you the possibility of getting into places others can't go.

I have several times suggested that what I call the “Establishment” in this country is today more powerful than ever before. By “Establishment” I do not mean only the centers of official power – though they are certainly part of it – but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised ... the “Establishment” can be seen at work in the activities of, not only the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl Marshal, but of such lesser mortals as the Chairman of the Arts Council, the Director-General of the BBC, and even the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, not to mention dignitaries like Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

You can go lots of places as Gaius Baltar that other people aren't allowed to pursue.

Power tires only those who do not have it.

If I bring up political power, personal power, it sounds like they're my terms, and they're not.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.

I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.

It may well be true that, as a former cabinet member, I had better access than some.

Chile is still at the whim of powerful, traditional elites who sit as a higher societal authority than the elected government.

I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it.

No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, truly powerful...

I do not wish to see men of culture asking to be entrusted with power

What's certain is that ranking powerful people is inherently self-defeating. For starters, true potentates know who they are without being told, and they have no need to announce it.

Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

If Advaniji did not want, I would never have been Prime Minister.

When I go see a basketball game, I'm always in the front row. I always have a table at a restaurant; I never have trouble getting a taxi.

I am marooned on a Crag of Superiority in an ocean of soldiers.