Nathaniel Macon Quotes

I'm not consumed with political machinations.

Despite an occasional nagging misgiving, I quickly found myself prepared to use the serrated edge of the political knife in the Johnson White House.

In my years working in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, I had learned that those who seek the presidency are prepared to stop at almost nothing to get their party’s nomination.

The mission of parties is to keep the people divided into factions, that they may be unable to do anything for themselves.

On the political chessboard of internal palace intrigue politics, our people were played last night as a pawn…. It is why the American people hate Congress. It is why they hate them.

There's not a self-regulating group of nice fair-playing people in politics. There are a lot of dodgy people in politics.

No one out there is interested in who did what to whom in Westminster politics.

There are conspiracies all over the Senate floor on any day!

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

There's something very Nixonian about the idea of keeping an enemy's list.

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game.

And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.

I do not want to be a pawn in a political campaign.

Neither political party is clean when it comes to tactics that divide our people.

The political world is a dark place. If you want to portray it accurately, authentically, you've got to turn out the lights from time to time.

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address.

The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.

I wasn’t elected to get into back room deals with Jesse Helms. I’ve despised Jesse Helms since I was 18 years old.

What a vicious practice is this of our politicians at Washington pairing off ["horse trading"]! As if one man who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going away; as if your presence did not tell in more ways than in your vote.

I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public office in Washington. Here ruining people is considered a sport … Politics is a blood sport.

Politics is such a torment that I would advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all of the time. But the Republicans haven't given up trying.

When legislation is rewritten in secret and passed without members even present, let alone voting ... something is wrong.

The Founding Fathers did not foresee the party system as it has developed, and what they knew about its early beginnings the disliked intensely.

Convention delegates live the compressed existence of butterflies. For a brief period they are admired, wooed, pressured, flattered, cajoled, endlessly pursued. The day after they have chosen, they return to oblivion.