Galactic Senate Quotes

Of course. For that brief instant, Anakin didn’t care who bombed Cato Neimoidia or why; he just wished it would all disappear, that the sunless realm of Coruscant’s underworld really was a portal to another dimension, one without the Galactic Senate or the Jedi Order. But then guilt quickly draped over that, an understanding of the civilian suffering on the planet, where right now emergency medical crews attempted to rescue Neimoidians from the debris.

Longtime political followers will recall young Queen Amidala of Naboo. Four years ago she came to Coruscant and deposed the Chancellor to questionably hasten along aid for her home planet. Though no hard evidence of the Trade Federation’s misdeeds was ever produced, Amidala swayed the opinion of the Senate. Her speech, which was most likely written for her, given her age at the time, was stirring…and we can’t help wondering what she’ll stir up this time. Now a senator for the Galactic Republic, Amidala has returned. A puppet queen no longer, surely, but the question remains: who is pulling her strings now? —TriNebulon News

At the age of fifteen, during the winter when she’d discovered smashball, romance, and her parents’ profound imperfections, Mon Mothma had decided to devote her life to studying history; decided to turn her back on her family’s political dynasty and to spend her days in a cramped study reading thousand-year-old diaries and letters and cargo manifests until her eyes burned. She would be detective, coroner, and philosopher all at once, examining means and motive and cause of death for entire civilizations. She hadn’t become a historian, of course. By the next summer, Mon’s moment of rebellion had been forgotten. Inertia and family pressures and a genuine love of governance had returned her to the road to politics. She’d gone on to become a senator (far too young, she thought now) and scrabbled for votes and smiled and kept her head above water until she’d learned how to play the game for real.

On one hand, the Inheritance Wars answered the question of whether a planet or an alliance of planets could leave the Federation — the answer was no — while, on the other hand, the Inheritance Wars made the Grand Senate, and the Federation as a whole, more authoritarian and less inclined to take concerns from the out-worlds seriously.

The media largely exists in an echo chamber, where they tell themselves that they’re important and the Grand Senators believe them, because if they weren’t telling the truth it would be on the news. But if we can get out an alternate story, it will sound more believable because there’s already a strong reservoir of distrust.

In public, all members of the Senate regard their fellow Senators as rivals. In private, they are often far more friendly—after all, they have friends and family in common.

The few Senators who are not part of the Factions are rarely able to accomplish anything.

The Senate’s security levels often leave something to be desired. While the Senators themselves are meant to be above suspicion, they are often quite willing to leak sensitive data to the media for their own reasons, Even if the Senators themselves do not leak the data, they have a habit of informing their subordinates, who might happily leak the information for their own reasons... ...What this means, in effect, is that anything told to the Senate may not remain secret for very long...

He danced around a pair of long-haired Republic advocates coming out of a galactic-wide kaff franchise, the purple streaks running through their hair a dead giveaway that they made their living as citizen lobbyists. Professional protestors jumping from one hot topic to the next. Who knew what the outrage of the hour was on Ponterra. Maybe the dissolving of the House and Senate. But probably something more farcical, like free health care for household pets. It was all Keel could do to keep from “accidentally” bumping into them and knocking the overpriced dessert they tried to pass off as kaff out of their hands.

After a slightly uneven start to her career in galactic politics, Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo seems to be settling in. Now a member of several prestigious committees, the former planetary queen has become a voice for people other than her own in the most commendable of ways: helping them build the very roofs above their heads. Working alongside such renowned senators as Mon Mothma of Chandrila and Onaconda Farr of Rodia, young Amidala is helping serve the galaxy while still respecting her homeworld via her style and manner of dress, called “tasteful” and “traditional chic.” Senator Amidala is a fresh new face that the Senate needs. Any rumors of pirates in the sector are, at this time, unsubstantiated.

Bail, it’s the only way. It’s the only hope you have of remaining in a position to do anyone any good. Vote for Palpatine. Vote for the Empire. Make Mon Mothma vote for him, too. Be good little Senators. Mind your manners and keep your heads down. And keep doing… all those things we can’t talk about. All those things I can’t know. Promise me, Bail.

Princess Leia Organa would note years later that her adoptive father Senator Bail Organa had once, sadly, recounted a story to her where an unnamed senator—one whom he implied was a close friend—had noted that the jubilant acclaim was “how liberty died.”14

Hey, Gwen. How’s it going?” he asked. “Good, Martin,” she replied. “How are you today?” “Fine. I’m fine. I gotta say though, this meeting, with all of these motions being raised and seconded, I feel like I’m in one of the Star Wars prequels.” “I know!” Gwen enthused. She proceeded to go on at length about how much she loved the Star Wars prequels, and how particularly the parts set in the Galactic Senate gave all of the events much more of a sense of gravitas. Martin drank his coffee as quickly as he could and tried to pretend the conversation wasn’t happening.

Five standard years have passed since Darth Sidious proclaimed himself galactic Emperor. The brutal Clone Wars are a memory, and the Emperor’s apprentice, Darth Vader, has succeeded in hunting down most of the Jedi who survived dreaded Order 66. On Coruscant a servile Senate applauds the Emperor’s every decree, and the populations of the Core Worlds bask in a sense of renewed prosperity. In the Outer Rim, meanwhile, the myriad species of former Separatist worlds find themselves no better off than they were before the civil war. Stripped of weaponry and resources, they have been left to fend for themselves in an Empire that has largely turned its back on them. Where resentment has boiled over into acts of sedition, the Empire has been quick to mete out punishment. But as confident as he is in his own and Vader’s dark side powers, the Emperor understands that only a supreme military, overseen by a commander with the will to be as merciless as he is, can secure an Empire that will endure for a thousand generations …

He might have remained a Judicial were it not for a growing schism that began to eat away at the department’s long-held and nonpartisan mandate to keep the galaxy free of conflict. On the one side stood Tarkin and others who were committed to enforcing the law and safeguarding the Republic; on the other, a growing number of dissidents who had come to view the Republic as a galactic disease. They detested the influence peddling, the complacency of the Senate, and the proliferation of corporate criminality. They saw the Jedi Order as antiquated and ineffectual, and they yearned for a more equitable system of government—or none at all. As the clashes between Republic and Separatist interests escalated in frequency and intensity, Tarkin would find himself pitted against many of the Judicials with whom he had previously served. The galaxy was fast becoming an arena for ideologues and industrialists, with the Judicials being used to settle trade disputes or to further corporate agendas.

Political historian Barouth Regorab had likened the difference between a planetary government and the Galactic Senate to that between a rural community and a metropolis: “When a person depends upon their neighbor for assistance during the harvest—when strangers are few and familial ties bind the farmer to the freighter captain—the greatest danger is shunning or exile. Mollifying your peers becomes a matter of survival. You have an incentive to iron out differences, or if necessary to bury any radical beliefs that would put you at odds with your community. “In a city of millions, however, a person may build a tailor-made community inside the larger organism. Anger your neighbor and you may move in with a friend. Become an outcast among your co-workers and you may take a job with a competitor. Diverse arts and philosophies may flourish without the flattening effect of more tight-knit communities, and differences may be celebrated. Yet a lack of common ties can also cause neighbors to see one another as rivals. Ideological opponents can be dismissed without need for engagement. And good people may slip through the cracks, lost in the chaos and written off as someone else’s problem.