Power Structure Quotes

I care not who forms the government of a country, so long as I control the purse strings.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.

When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage.

The objective of the people who bring impeachment charges, if the Republicans do this on Trump, the objective will be to get one of them back in the power structure.

Invisible government

My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

If the people be governors, who shall be governed?

In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time.

As sons obey their father and wives obey their husbands, so should citizens obey their rulers.

They say that a kingdom is like a pyramid: the king on top and the people below. But in this country, it's upside down.

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

The only way to get anywhere in Congress is to stay there and let seniority take its course.

Brother Number Two

If you've been on top of the food chain in the Armed Forces, that's who you are. You're used to dealing with your life in a particular way.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

I have established the republic. But today it is not clear whether the form of government is a republic, a dictatorship, or personal rule.

Putin doesn't conduct elections in the Western sense of elections. This is more accurately probably described as a plebiscite, where people are supposed to express their support for him. The Russian system is not unique in this respect, but it is rather interesting. Here, in the West, the impression that people have is that Putin runs the whole country. This is not so, at all. To a certain extent, you could say that he runs the Kremlin, and this means that it's, in some situations, hard to tell whether it's him running the Kremlin, or the people around him running him.

It is quite clear, however, that there won't be any real changes with the current clan structure having seized power in the course of the Karabakh conflict.

Humans want to know the hierarchy; it's important for there to be one leader.

How is the Empire?

Where men have general rights, and are all guided, as it were, by one mind, it is certain that every individual has the less right the more the rest collectively exceed him in power

England is one if the great powers of the world, but this has not been brought about by Queen Victoria’s absolute rule. She had able men of Parliament back of her at all times and of course the discussed everything until the best result was obtained ... In China, I have 400 million people, all dependent on my judgement.

Unlike Marxism, the Leninist one-party state is not a philosophy. It is a mechanism for holding power. It works because it clearly defines who gets to be the elite - the political elite, the cultural elite, the financial elite.