Rich Galen Quotes

In the final analysis, politics is a game of force, in which no weakling may expect to be assigned a conspicuous role.

Washington is built on power.

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

There are no techniques in politics.

In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy.

Obama considers himself above deal-making and back-slapping, political necessities he often delegates to Vice President Joe Biden and other lesser sorts.

I'd worked at the White House for two years, and I'd read a bunch of White House memoirs because everybody who works at the White House, even for five minutes, writes a memoir usually not less than 600 pages long - and never without the word 'power' in the title.

Weak countries always exaggerate their power.

The most important thing that the person at the White House knows when he talks to you is that you are not in there.

All political questions, all matters of right, are at bottom only questions of might.

Washington has political power combined with the insider illusion of being in control.

As Chairman of the [House] Ways and Means Committee, I can contact the President whoever he may be, quite readily on the telephone. As a Vice President, I don't know whether he'd listen to me or not.

The roots of power in the White House are often bourbon and branch water taken with the President at the end of the day.

Diplomacy, is persuasion in the shadow of power.

No White House staff person wants to conflict with the First Lady who goes home and has the ear of the President all night.

The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

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

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power

The size of your business should be matched by the size of your political influence. If your political influence is smaller than your business, it will be taken away from you. If your political influence is bigger than your business, then you are a politician.

Military action without political context is ineffective.

In politics, there is only one crime that is unforgivable - showing weakness.

The one thing I didn't want to do was a show about the White House. I was too close to it.

Quite obviously power will continue to play a central role in global politics as it always does. But usually there is something else.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

Politics is about realities, not logic.