Rory Bremner Quotes

I think a lot of people start out full of idealism and fresh ideas. And then a lot of times, being re-elected becomes more important than staying true to your principles.

I probably owe my political dismay to New Labour, but also my growing sense that the satirical shape of human affairs is international and historical, not glued to the tawdry ambitions of a team of politicians who represent nothing but themselves.

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.

Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.

All it takes to become president is money and a certain kind of power. Being president is the first thing I can shoot for, not the highest. It may come to a point where people take rock and roll musicians more seriously than they take politicians. It may eventually turn out that musicians have more credibility.

I doubt there's any government in the world that guides itself primarily by strategy or conceptual documents or worldview. Anybody who has the reins of power has to look at practical limitations and tradeoffs - the fact that you can focus at most on one or two things at a time, that resources are limited.

The notion of our leaders as patrician ascetics of unassailable virtue is risible.

Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one.

Why the best men do not get into politics.

Truths! Do you think I could have created a government … with truths? You make history with ambition, not with truths.

Change: In politics, the substitution of one disappointment for another.

I entered Parliament with what I thought to be the lowest possible opinion of the average member. I came out with one still lower.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.

Yet today our splendid theory of government is confronted by a great peril. We have become blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with glutted markets and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible for a few men to become landlords of a proud city like this while God's poor are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a menace to Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which evokes more anger – businesses that know and care about nothing except profits or governments that know and care about nothing except power and paper-pushing. However, anger is not a solution. Anger attempts to shout down problems, and it never works.

Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them.

Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

My three years in politics was very instructive about the way in which the appetite for political power can destroy a human mind, destroy principles and values, and transform people into little monsters.

Some politicians are in so long they completely lose touch with reality.

I think there are really serious problems in this country and I think politics in a lot of ways is failing the country.

I think anyone who serves in public office should have a little bit of contempt for government in their heart.

My election only proves that the citizens are tired of the experienced politicians who over the past 28 years created a country of opportunities - opportunities to steal, bribe and loot.