Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1415
AUTHOR:
Jimmy Breslin (1929– )
QUOTATION:
All political power is primarily an illusion…. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.
ATTRIBUTION:
JIMMY BRESLIN, How the Good Guys Finally Won, Notes from an Impeachment Summer, pp. 33–34 (1975).
The phrase is usually quoted as “blue smoke and mirrors.”
