We demand of our political life greater certainty and greater perfection than we demand of our personal life.

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.

Politicians tend to live "in character," and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.

Successful democratic politicians are in secure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.

There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.

Senator Alfonse D'Amato resides in a town that resembles a medieval fortress whose political leaders peer out at the countryside in search of opportunities to plunder.

Politics, in a sense, has always been a con game.

A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.