"When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget"

“Politics: the art of keeping as many balls as possible up in the air at one time while protecting your own.”

“All rising to great place is by a winding stair.”

"Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara… are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport"

"Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria."

"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other."

"Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success."

"You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain."

"Politics is show business for ugly people."

"Even Napoleon had his Watergate."

"Nowadays it’s not as important for voters to know what a politician has done as what he or she hasn’t done."

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."

"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose."

"I’ve got all of my enemies here in the Cabinet where I can keep an eye on them."

"If Lincoln were alive today, he’d be turning over in his grave."

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."

"There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible."

"To err is human. To blame someone else is politics."

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN’T SWIM."

"There are no favourites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration."

"The biggest danger for a politician is to shake hands with a man who is physically stronger, has been drinking and is voting for the other guy."

"Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggy’ until you can find a rock."

"I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."

"The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice."

"Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame."

"The kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation."

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

"The people have spoke – the bastards"