Alan Greenspan Quotes

[Republicans] swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.

Most people who get into power in the western world start with great intentions, but slowly they all become entrapped and hung by their own petard.

… J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.

A good man fallen among politicians.

[Describing member of Congress:] 80 percent were hypocrites. 80 percent, liars. 80 percent, serious sinners.... There is always boozing and floozing.

It is the curse of the Labor movement that, as soon as it has acquired a certain “power,” it seeks to enlarge this power by unprincipled means. Social-Democracy also was originally “pure” in almost all countries. Most Social-patriots of today were real Marxists. By Marxist propaganda the masses were won, and as soon as the party gained “power,” they [the principled means] were abandoned.

They [the Republicans] are the most crooked, lying bunch I have ever seen.

What's troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

There is a tendency in all parties, when they have been for a long time in possession of power, to augment it.

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.

It isn’t easy, but I guess I can understand why the good citizens of the hill country might let themselves be represented in Washington by a man who drinks too much. It isn’t easy, but I guess I can even understand why the good citizens of the hill country might even let themselves be represented by a man in Washington who carouses with city women while his wife and children are back here working the land. But, as God is my witness, I will never understand why the good people of the hill country would let themselves be represented by a man who takes female sheep up into the hills alone at night!

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,--the “spoils,” so called, “of office.” And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks.

Republicanism stands for vested rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the annihilation of every semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a [Theodore] Roosevelt.

In Washington it is an honor to be disgraced.... You have to have been somebody to fall.

This entire administration has been a disgrace from the very beginning to everyone who has had any thing to do with bring it to power. I take my full share of the … shame myself. I can atone for what I have done no otherwise than in refusing to be instrumental in continuing it.

[Huey Long is] suffering from halitosis of the intellect. That's presuming Emperor Long has an intellect.

A ruthless partisan [who] does not have within his conscience those scruples which the country has a right to expect from the President of the United States.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

… a lying crook in the Presidency

Donald Rumsfeld is the rottenest person I have known in government

Our blooming republic began to decline under the withering touch of Martin Van Buren! Disappointed ambition; thirst for power, pride, corruption, party spirit, faction, patronage; perquisites, fame, tangling alliances, priest-craft, and spiritual wickedness in high places, struck hands and reveled in midnight splendor.