You can't get back to power by defining your project in negative terms. But it helps to have somebody in office who represents the opposite of what you believe.
Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is.
Your enemies hate you more than they hate your ideas. Should you want a project to be undone propose it. Even if it were as useful as a bishop's mire it would be rejected. Once you are defeated let the humblest-looking among you sponsor it and your enemies to humble you will approve it.
I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.
One interest must be opposed to another interest. Vices, as they exist, must be turned against each other.
You don't want to go right, if everyone thinks you're going to go right. You go left, on purpose. Sometimes you can't explain why, and you can't explain what left looks like, but you just do it.
It is wrong to follow the advice of an adversary; nevertheless it is right to hear it, that you may do the contrary; and this is the essence of good policy.
The whole life with a wife is like an end game with two bishops of different colors.
If you just fight against everything willy-nilly, then the message is you're just gonna obstruct on anything. I would rather fight very, very hard on matters of fundamental principle and then have the critique be that Trump is violating the very foundations of America.
