Major Owens Quotes

Bureaucrats understand who their real masters are. Their real masters are not their nominal department heads. The real powers are the chairmen on Capitol Hill.

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

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.

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

President Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that's not how adults with power respond to things.

Power tends to corrupt. But the power in Washington resides in Congress, if it wants to use it. It can do anything - it can stop the Vietnam War, it can make its will felt, if it can ever get its act together to do anything.

I've been dealing with politicians all my life. All my life. And I've always gotten them to do what I need them to do.

Politicians love regulating. That's part of the whole power structure.

The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim.

The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.

The House of Representatives is ruled by a small group of old men.

The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of influence.

The governor has led the way, but he's not an emperor. The legislature has to act. He cannot pass a bill by himself.

Easier to control a Congress than a college faculty.

They who possess the prince possess the laws.

Those most adjacent to the seat of legislation will always possess advantages over others.

On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?

The lobbyists are a kind of permanent other government.

The leaders of a party, or those who are so called, have but little sway over their followers, particularly when not in Government, and when they have it not in their power to threaten them with any very serious consequences

We could have beaten John Kennedy on Civil Rights. We can’t beat Lyndon Johnson. He’s a man who understands power and how to use it. He’ll tear your arm off at the shoulder and beat you over the head with it, but he’ll get the votes. We’re going to lose to Lyndon Johnson.

Politics is the art of making wha appearts to be impossible possible.

You know, by the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. ... You may find you can get away with virtual presidents, virtual prime ministers, virtual everything.

The problem with politics isn't the money; it's the power.

I'm a legislator, but it's hard to legislate when my party's out of power.

'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street.