Seymour Hersh Quotes

I think political people are afraid of me.

Washington is a city that coddles up to and worships power.

Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.

Power in Washington is simply the perception of power.

Political battles are won when the rich favor them.

It's wherever business rules, business is going to get the politicians they want because they control the money and money controls the power.

I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things.

I can call a march, and thousands come out, and I happen to have access to the White House at the same time.

Dictators, unlike Democrats, depend on a small coterie to sustain their power. These backers, generally drawn from the military, the senior civil service, and family or clan members, have a synergistic relationship with their dictator. The dictator delivers opportunities for them to become rich, and they protect him from being overthrown.

You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

I grew up in that world of power and politics in Washington, but when you grow up around it, you are completely unfazed by it.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.

Washington lawyers and politicians have been bedfellows from the moment our nation was conceived.

The occupations must be so allotted and contrived, that we may, in secret, influence all political transactions.

I noticed that the highly organized lobbies in Washington were producing results regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand.

There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life…. People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that.

People who think the might in Washington can be persuaded, or corrupted if you will, by anything less than voters just doesn’t understand what its about and never will. They don’t know what Washington juice is made of.

I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.

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

A few people with a clear agenda can make a big difference in government.

It used to be that Washington admired Hollywood for its sex and Hollywood admired Washington for its power. These days, Washington admires Hollywood for its power and Hollywood admires Washington for its sex.

No man ever exercised less influence in the Senate or the House of Representatives than he, but no man ever exercised more power as a political leader.

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.