Interest Groups Quotes

The prince must not mind incurring the scandal of those vices without which it would be difficult to save the state.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Always remember, politics is a substitute for violence.

The disagreement among American political parties, with only a few exceptions, has been over the practical question of how to secure the agreed objective, while conciliating different interests, rather than over ultimate values or over what interest is paramount.

Politics is the art of making wha appearts to be impossible possible.

The media, famously called the marketplace of ideas, is a failed market when a strong interest faces no like interest to generate competing ideas.

Politics is about power, and it is about group power.

Politicians pay more attention to interest groups than to the public interest.

If your voices are not heard, you can be sure that many others will be - in particular those who are paid to present a point of view, and often do it most effectively.

It’s in their interest to keep a Republican majority …. It’s sort of ‘Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

There are two fairly standard approaches to political power used by those who seek it. Some seek power with the assumption that the citizenry are the source of legitimacy and are to be treated with respect. Others concentrate on identifying whatever insecurities there are within the citizenry and on exploiting them.'

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business.

Cutting the fiscal deficit is not popular. That is the experience of all governments in all countries. Expenditure cuts hurt certain vested interests, and they don't like it.

We will vote for the special interests and say lots of luck but, you're being voted out of power.

All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men’s desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these.

The reason there are tens of thousands of lobbyists is because the ever-expanding federal government creates ever-increasing opportunities for abuse. The more the federal government does, the more lobbyists there will be to protect special interests at the expense of the common interest.

I understand the politics of Washington, D.C. You need to hold firm, you need to work with your colleagues, and you need to throw elbows.

Were there no contrariety of interests, nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve free institutions. The right of suffrage alone would be a sufficient guarantee. It is the conflict of opposing interests which renders it the most difficult work of man.

I have never regarded politics as an arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.

Christians ought not to persecute one another, and that only for small differences in opinion, when what is right or wrong for the most part remains a doubt and uncertain; whil'st the evils are only certain that such disputes produce.

The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.

The dominant color of politics is gray; difficult choices and compromise are required at almost every step of the journey toward a major new program.

It’s the people verses the special interests and I’m going to fight this out till the end.

The only law Washington can be counted on to respect: It is the law of dispersed costs but concentrated benefits

Everyone in America seems to be joining an organization of some kind, and in Congress one hears from them all.