Politics & Power Quote by John George Nicolay

Politics doesn’t just attract ambition; it manufactures it, then turns it into sport. Nicolay’s line lands with the cool clarity of someone who watched public life from close range and didn’t romanticize what he saw. “Activity in politics” sounds almost clinical, like a variable in an experiment. That choice matters: he isn’t condemning politics outright, he’s describing its chemistry. Once people get moving inside the system, “eager competition and sharp rivalry” aren’t anomalies, they’re the predictable byproducts.

The phrasing hints at a moral warning without preaching it. “Eager” flatters the contestants with energy and purpose, while “sharp” signals the edge: rivalry that can cut reputations, alliances, and maybe the public good. Nicolay, best known as Lincoln’s longtime secretary and later biographer, had a front-row seat to the machinery of party politics during the Civil War era, when patronage, factionalism, and ideological stakes collided daily. In that world, rivals weren’t just debating policy; they were competing for access, narrative control, and historical legitimacy.

Subtextually, Nicolay is also commenting on how political systems incentivize behavior. The line suggests a feedback loop: the more active the arena becomes, the more it rewards rivalry as a survival skill. That’s why it still reads modern. It’s not a lament about “civility” but an observation about incentives: once politics becomes a career ecosystem, competition isn’t a breakdown of democracy. It’s part of its operating system.