Top 37 Quotes by Beau Willimon

This is the way I think about politics: We want two diametrically opposed things from a politician. On one hand we want them to be bastions of moral integrity, perfect people, saints. And on the other hand, we want them to be effective leaders.

In Washington, if you're a congressman or a senator or the President, you make much more money than the average American, but you'd think that if you were the leader of the free world you'd be making major bank, and you don't.

When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.

Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.

It's a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved - people's ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It's dramatic, it's interesting, and I think it's something we can all identify with to a degree.

Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.