Leadership Quote by Giulio Andreotti

Power is exhausting mostly to the people forced to orbit it. Andreotti's line lands like a shrug, but it carries the cold confidence of someone who spent decades inside the engine room of the Italian state. He flips a familiar moral warning ("power corrupts", "power burdens") into something more transactional: fatigue isn't an ethical consequence of ruling; it's a symptom of wanting in. The tired ones are the climbers, the petitioners, the critics, the coalition partners - everyone burning calories trying to get close to the levers. The person holding the lever, by contrast, gets to conserve energy by defining the schedule, the terms, the story.

The subtext is pure Andreotti: power isn't romantic, it's a craft - and a durable one. If you're "tired" by power, you're admitting you lack it, because real authority doesn't feel like strain; it feels like default settings. The cynicism is almost hygienic. It disinfects politics of idealism and replaces it with a worldview where weariness is for amateurs and virtue is a luxury.

Context matters. Andreotti was the ultimate survivor of postwar Italy's Christian Democratic era, governing through shifting alliances and permanent backstage negotiation, in a system where governance often looked like management of chaos. In that landscape, "fatigue" is a political tell: a sign you're fighting the current rather than directing it. The line doubles as a warning and a boast - if power is tiring you, you are not built for it, and you are certainly not holding it.