Robert Rinder Quotes

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.

Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly.

I have watched people around members of the royal family for a long time now, and something very strange happens to them. They turn into sycophants.

A flatterer can risk everything with great personages.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

He was always testing you. He was always testing his power.

There's always been a man telling me what to do.

But there is a difference between cozying up to power and being close to power.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.

It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

It's the nature of Hollywood that there are the people in power and the people who tell them what they want them to hear.

Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a freeborn Briton can do.

Nothing overshadows truth so completely as authority.

Telling a man to go to hell and making him go are two different propositions.

It is one thing to persuade, another to command …

I can’t afford to have my Vice President who knows every reporter in town, go around saying we’re all screwed up, so we’re going to keep him happy. You are dealing with a very insecure, sensitive man with a huge ego. I want you to literally kiss his ass from one end of Washington to the other.

Once a person insists on how you are to think he immediately begins to insist on how you are to behave.