Politics are now nothing more than the means of rising in the world.
Anyone who gets to the top in politics is a control freak.
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
I don't think Cheney started off in 2000 with a burning desire to become vice-president. I think the prospect gradually became more appealing, and he goosed the process.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
Not everyone who goes to Washington becomes Washington.
Politics has been very good to me. Politics can become, and often is, very brutal
Territorial Governors -- are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in order to build up stakes and come back as United States Senators.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
I've never believed in running for office so you can eventually run for some other office.
Jason McDermott's political career, however bogus, appears to have had an early and promising start.
I have not yet met the politician who did not start to dream of the next highest office the minute that he was sworn in.
There are more non-committee chairmen than there are committee chairmen. And the non-committee chairmen want to be chairmen some day. They will not eliminate term limits on existing committee chairmen.
Career politicians like Marco Rubio worry more about keeping the job than doing the job and are constantly looking for their next political promotion.
I have run across characters in my political career that have that singular focus of being someone, being in a position of power.
Political life is like a big wheel: constantly turning. At times you are up, at times down. But always, the wheel keeps moving.
I was never supposed to make it to Congress. I was a staff person.
After the presidency, there's nowhere else to go in politics.
