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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.

Beau Willimon

I don’t think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.
BEAU WILLIMON

Bad Corrupt Fundamentally Thinking
We all experience power struggles in our lives – at the workplace, with our friends, in our love lives. In a way, we’re all politicians.
BEAU WILLIMON

Life Love Our Struggle
The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.
BEAU WILLIMON

Balance Government Way
When you’re creating new roles out of scratch in my opinion working with the actors is a great asset. You can learn a lot from that.
BEAU WILLIMON

Creating Role Scratch
Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you’re dealing with a lot more characters.
BEAU WILLIMON

Able Character Location
A lot more locations and you’re able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.
BEAU WILLIMON

Location Lot Rely Stage Thing
When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won’t meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It’s the perversion of idealism.
BEAU WILLIMON

Compromise Party Way
You just have to re-wire your brain when you’re shifting from the stage to the screen, or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.
BEAU WILLIMON

Brain Shifting Wire
And they all have something to offer and making the story better and bringing their vision to what you see in the frame.
BEAU WILLIMON

Better Frame Something Story
Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices.
BEAU WILLIMON

Director Vision Voice
My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole – I was an advance man.
BEAU WILLIMON

Campaign Jobs Men
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.
BEAU WILLIMON

Ambition Games Thinking
In the best possible scenario, whenever you get notes from people, they’re good notes, and they see things that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and they make you a better writer.
BEAU WILLIMON

Notes People Scenarios
At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk – games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.
BEAU WILLIMON

Games Home Play
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.
BEAU WILLIMON

Average Leader Thinking
I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.
BEAU WILLIMON

Accomplish Anything Contract Human

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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