Washington Dc Quotes

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.”
― George Packer

“The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government

“When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks.”
― Glenn Beck

“All suburban housing developments look alike, and besides, every Yankee who ever crossed the Potomac except Ulysses S. Grant got lost as soon as he reached the Virginia side.”
― Charles McCarry, The Shanghai Factor

“Described Washington as a community of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”
― John F. Kennedy

“Both parties promote "changing Washington," but in reality they like Washington just the way it is: little gets done that they don't like, and none of our officials are truly held accountable.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“If you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.

It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Funny thing about love, ain’t it? Sometimes it saves you and sometimes, like right then, even love isn’t enough.”
― Eden Butler, Infinite Us

“He didn't seem to understand yet was that I didn't really care about the ways of Washington.”
― Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance

“Politeness has become so rare that some people mistake it for flirtation.”
― waseem

“Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
― Marion Barry

“...it was easy to forget that Washington was just another glum city of government, like Albany or Sacramento, legislators and lobbyists and bureaucrats and their clerks working and reworking the sodden language of government in order to distribute the spoils.”
― Ward Just

“He believed something that he could hardly explain, even to himself. He thought it was a tragedy that would have to be played out, in the sense that water always seeks its own level. In some ultimate sense, there was no one at the controls. The war ran on its own motion...But the thing would not be stopped, because to stop it, simply to end it, would be to repudiate too much. Too many words to eat, too many unforeseen consequences, too much shame, too many unrequited dead. So the war was a force of nature, a wand of the gods...”
― Ward Just

“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- Mark Twain”
― L.A. Smith, fukushima on the hudson

“Snowmageddon.
Dirty glacial clouds hammered the city's anvil. On the District of Columbia’s northwestern edge, gusts of snow rolled across the Park Road Bridge like volcanic ash.”
― Simon Conway, Rock Creek Park

“Excerpt from page 3 of "Wicked Washington"
Shelly Williams, the main character, speaking about her life:

And close and dangerous calls were almost my last name. Yet I felt as comfortable among the street hustlers, junkies, thieves, and criminals of D.C. as I did dining with my
white-collar, college-pedigreed friends over filet mignon, Maine lobster, and strawberry cheesecake at LaMermaid
Seafood Restaurant.”
― Sonja D. Jones, Wicked Washington

“Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn't stay in the government at that level, or you're made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth—essentially, never say the whole truth—of what they expect and what they're doing and what they believe and why they're doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.”
― Daniel Ellsberg

“Not surprisingly, there's nothing to do at the Pentagon except start a war.”
― Paul Beatty

“I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great dead American would be scandalized over some crime against How It Used to Be. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).”
― Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital

“At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy.”
― Dave Barry, I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood

“America acknowledged the greatness of Confucius through a trio of ancient lawgivers—Moses flanked by Confucius to his right and Solon on his left—on the monument to “Justice, the Guardian of Liberty” displayed on the eastern pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order

“There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order

“I swear if Washington moved any slower, we could be at war and it would all be over before they could even lift their sluggish, naked, dead asses off of their comfortable heated-seat toilets. -Fitzhugh to Captain Jeeter”
― Ray Palla, H: Infidels of Oil

“They treat colored people like kings and queens in Washington, cause thas where the president lives. Would they treat colored people anything but good in a city where the president hangs his hat and pets his dog and snores besides Mrs. President every night? Now would they?”
― Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories

“In a city that attracted protesters, organizers, and activists of every variety, debating issues across the political spectrum and with a huge population of black people, the messages in his lyrics were received with enthusiasm. “This was Chocolate City. People in DC were pretty sophisticated and they liked his political wit, and I think he liked speaking truth to power in the heart of the government.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man