Kelly Miller Quotes

Ideology isn’t driving the dynamic in Washington, it’s the desire to stay in power.

In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course.

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

All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.

I would be surprised to see the White House scaling back on anything. That would be an admission they are operating from a position of weakness.

Gossip is easy, politics is hard.

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Politicians trim and tack in their quest for power, but they do so in order to get the wind of votes in their sails.

You have to be a demagogue on a lot of little things if you want to be around to have your way on the big things.

Washington [DC] is a zero sum place.

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

I don't play politics.

Power, however it has evolved, whatever its origins, will not be given up without a struggle.

Power is as power does.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

I'm not consumed with political machinations.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.

But they were going to war anyway and they were going to bully and pressure countries to vote for it.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

In a confrontation with the politics of power, the soft center has always melted away.

It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.

What's going on in the Senate is kind of a politics of escalation. We're getting sort of like the Mideast: pay back everybody when you're in charge.