Stone Gossard Quotes

It's in the nature of the Presidency that most of the people youy meet want something.

Power in itself has never attracted me, nor has position been my goal.

It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it.

A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority.

While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

So I still seized the power, but I felt that if I officially made myself the boss, in black and white, it would be too intimidating for the other producers and the other men who worked on the show. In other words, I had the power, but I gave them the title.

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

I like power and I like to use it.

To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective.

I am and always will be a leader.

I'm not into power for the sake of it.

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.

In conspiracies, men who know what they wanted commonly ended by controlling the men who did not.

I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it.

You want power because it's an opportunity.

Political ambition, like other kinds of ambition, is a basic human appetite …. Like other human appetites, ambition is not evenly distributed among the population, but enough people with substantial political ambition are naturally drawn to political careers to make the problem of controlling it a major aspect of constitutional government.

Power is insinuating. Few men are satisfied with less power than they are able to procure.

If you have sense enough to realize why flies gather around a restaurant, you should be able to appreciate why men run for office.

It is not a mistake to want power.

I want to lead. I want to change. And I'm going to do it.

I'm a hustler. I'm the Boss.

Nixon had this remarkably effective, deeply intense will to power. Reagan and I have a will to ideas.

Even the President needs passion.