There is no inherent power in the office of the vice presidency. Zero. None. It’s all a reflection of your relationship with the president. I mean, Kennedy never let Johnson in the office.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

What I’d really like to control is not machines, but people.

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

But there is a difference between cozying up to power and being close to power.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

Every reign must submit to a greater reign.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and then maybe I bring sort of my knowledge of power into play.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

I’m sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

Power works best when it is indirect – never coercing people; instead, getting them to voluntarily align with your interests.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

I feel strange when I get applauded by people in power… because it’s obvious that it’s them I’m criticizing, but they can’t show that in front of the cameras. It’s quite funny sometimes.

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don’t think Kennedy should have done it. I don’t think Johnson should have done it, and I don’t think we should have done it.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

When grand plans for scientific and defence technologies are made, do the people in power think about the sacrifices the people in the laboratories and fields have to make?

I have a reputation for taking on governors a lot more powerful than me.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

You could tell ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

People that’s in power – the central banks, these fiat currencies that are traded globally – they got influence over the messaging and the narrative in the media.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.