Leadership Quote by John Boehner

A Speaker of the House praising restraint is always a little performative, and John Boehner’s line knows it. In Washington, “the majority” is typically treated like a prizefight belt: you win it, you flaunt it, you use it to punish the other side. Boehner flips that instinct, insisting the majority’s worth isn’t the raw ability to dominate, but the capacity to deliver. It’s a values statement disguised as a managerial memo: stop treating power as a dopamine hit and start treating it as a tool.

The phrasing does two things at once. “Wield great power” evokes aggression and spectacle, the kind of scorched-earth lawmaking that turns institutions into reality TV. “Use power to do great things” is deliberately vague, and that vagueness is the point. It allows Boehner to call for governing competence without naming specific policies that would fracture his coalition. In a party often split between pragmatists and purists, “great things” becomes a blank check for unity rhetoric.

Context matters: Boehner led a House GOP frequently defined by internal rebellion, brinkmanship, and the constant temptation to use procedural muscle as a substitute for legislative accomplishment. The quote reads like a defense of institutionalism from a man stuck between a base that rewards conflict and a system that only functions through compromise. Subtext: if you turn majority status into a weapon, you’ll keep winning headlines and losing the country. If you turn it into output, you might actually deserve to keep it.