Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford Quotes

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.

Ambition is the mother of hypocrisy and prefers to skulk in corners and dark places. It cannot endure the light of day. It is an unclean vice wallowing in the depths, always hidden, but with ever an eye to advancement.

You think Trump cares if you leave? He wants power, not prosperity.

Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want to get something out of them, otherwise you'll come home to me with a full belly and an empty purse.

Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.

As governor, I don't want my fair share. I want more than my fair share.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

If you really think that ambition, power, lust, desire are not as applicable in the media as in politics or on Wall Street or anywhere else, you're deluding yourself.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated—unfairly so in my opinion. … there's nothing wrong with avarice as a motive as long as it doesn't lead to dishonest … conduct.

The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

Everybody has their own agenda, and that makes 'Power' a dark world. There aren't any really clean characters.

'House Of Cards' with Kevin Spacey - I love how it portrays humans in power as just like the rest of us - but even worse.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

One thing, and one thing only, prevents the establishment of a stable Central Government at Peking, and this is the insatiable greed of money which possesses every Chinese who attains to public office.

… in contriving any system of government and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him and, by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, cooperate to public good.

We corrupt the word of truth, and mix ... our doctrine with what is common and cheap... in order to turn the adulteration to our profit, and accommodate ourselves to those who meet us, and curry favor with everyone, becoming ventriloquists and chatterers, who serve their own pleasures by words uttered from the earth, and sinking into the earth, and, to gain the special good will of the multitude

Beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power.

This man [Aaron Burr] has no principles, public or private. As a politician, his sole spring of action is an inordinate ambition.

The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good.

Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.