Leadership Quote by Giulio Andreotti

A neat little cruelty disguised as advice: Andreotti’s line treats power not as a trophy but as a kind of weather system. The people inside it are insulated; the people outside it are exposed. “Wears out” is the operative verb. He’s not talking about moral outrage or democratic impatience in the abstract. He means fatigue as a governing tool: waiting, petitioning, bargaining, raging, hoping - all the energy expended by those who must knock on doors that never quite open.

Coming from Andreotti, the intent is hard to separate from biography. He was the emblem of Italy’s postwar Christian Democratic machine, a survivor across decades of coalition churn, scandals, and accusations that clung to him like cigarette smoke in parliamentary corridors. In that world, power is less a dramatic seizure than a patient occupation. The subtext is almost managerial: if you can hold the center long enough, your opponents will spend themselves. Time becomes an ally; frustration becomes an anesthetic.

The cynicism lands because it flips a common assumption. We tend to imagine power corrupts the powerful; Andreotti suggests power exhausts the powerless. It’s a theory of governance built on attrition, not persuasion. The line also carries a warning to reformers and outsiders: righteous energy isn’t enough if the system is designed to make you burn it up faster than you can replenish it. And it’s a quiet confession: longevity in politics often depends less on vision than on outlasting everyone who wants you gone.