Tim Robbins Quotes

What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

I think politicians who suggest they are uninterested in the support of newspapers are not being straight with people.

Does Obama create confusion on purpose?

There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins.

'Government gets things right' does not encourage sales. 'Government makes another blunder' does encourage sales, so there's a commercial imperative that pushes sensationalism.

Obama's people will all often complain about how trivial and silly the media is, but there's no president who's probably benefited from this sort of trivialness or superficial nature as President Obama.

Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.

Pictures can be devastating. Who allowed John Kerry to get himself photographed windsurfing in a flowered swimsuit? Anyone in the real world in that operation?

Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move.

Politics is show business for ugly people.

I understand why the Tories will be gunning for Alastair Campbell because they fear his campaigning skills.

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.

A summit is a photo opportunity featuring two or more heads of government who have no business to transact, but believe a set of smiley photos will do them a lot of good politically.

Pete Wilson was never more than the sum total of his focus groups.

The healthy presidency is one that never lets the press hustle the President's priorities.

[In a political contest,] the first guy who defines the other, wins

I have no more obligation to spin. When you’re in the White House, you spin.

How can you govern if you always have to feed the news cycle?

Politics is television and whoever masters it is likely to win.

It’s not anti-Americanism that you see around the world. It is anti-Bushism

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.

What people often forget is that for the parties involved, the media game is a vicious contest.

One thing that is fairly undeniable about Trump - love him or loathe him - is his understanding of how to manipulate the media and to perpetuate a symbiotic relationship with the press.

If you live in the overlapping world of politics and media, as I am learning, anything less than full transparency can potentially do you in.