You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.

Der Schiksal der Menschen wird davon abhängen, ob sich die Politik endlich bequemt, das Leben eines jeden heilig zu nehmen, oder ob die Hure weiterhin für jene auf die Straße geht, denen nichts heilig ist. Die Dame muß sich entscheiden.

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.

So our virtuesLie in the interpretation of the time:And power, unto itself most commendable,Hath not a tomb so evident as a chairTo extol what it hath done.One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.

The enemy was not the Klan but the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.

The host took care to produce one or another of these whenever the current subjects seemed about used up, so that the conversation gathered new life and at the same time steered clear of political arguments, which are hindersome to both ingestion and digestion.

I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.

When all the birds and all the fish join forces, the politicians will be forced to chew on and swallow their own slimy, wormlike words. But until the time that the sky and the sea blend into one, I’ll leave my fishing pole in a tree, disguised as a branch.

Nobody is either honest or dishonest. Life is a gradient, and a saint might be an 8.7, and a dirtbag politician might be a 1.2. Interestingly, piss and shit are numerically represented by 1 and 2, so I think it’s a perfect number to represent a politician.

I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about

What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money.

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant pastSecurity in human systems we're told will always always lastEmotions are the sail and blind faith is the mastWithout the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast."(History Will Teach Us Nothing)

Let’s all roll up our sleeves and get back to work. Or let’s create jobs where other people roll up other people’s sleeves, so these other people can get to work helping other people get to work. That’s brilliant. I should be a politician.

I want to be a politician because I like the idea of public service. Come on, who wouldn’t want all the people at their service? I’d get to live like a king, only I’d be voted in by my servants, rather than by God. And by God life would be good.