Politics Quotes - Page 2

There is no one as intolerant as an open minded liberal.

not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.

The statesman shears the sheep the politician skins them.

Imagine if one should drag an innocent passer-by from the street to the operating room of a nearby hospital and force him at gunpoint to perform a delicate operation. The man would burst into tears. However, if one were to ask him to sound off on problems such as nuclear experiments, Vietnam, the borders of Israel, support for Indonesia, aid to Latin America, or recognition of Red China, in most cases he would start spouting opinions.

Immeasurably, baby. I love you immeasurably.

and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth

To do things right, we need to UNITE black and white, red and blue, blue and white - all stars and stripes. We need to either apply all the lessons from the past - or get rid of all the stories and START AGAIN. We are moving towards a rainbow world. Our children are intermixing and so are our colors. You can keep your religions and traditions, but always stand with what is good for the greater good of ALL as a united neighborhood instead of a segregated team. This is what America needs. This is what the world needs. Our unity. In our schools, neighborhoods, communities, state offices and economic equations. Choosing to stand with the right wing or left wing, or this group or that group, is only going to keep this country divided and grounded. In the end, all human needs are the same and they will never change. So what is there to fight about? Let's hit restart and unite. Flip the script and start again. To make America truly great again, it must be united. Every bird needs two wings to fly. Any nation torn at the wings will never soar the skies. So we can all start here. The only political party anyone should be an active part of is the one called concerned.

Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.

...for a man is a Herdentier - an animal that always follows the herd, a gregarious animal - and quickly follow's its neighbour example.

Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes

Henry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're the Doctor of my dreamsWith your crinkly hair and your glassy stareAnd your Machiavellian schemesI know they say that you are very vainAnd short and fat and pushyBut at least you're not insaneHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were hereHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're so chubby and so neatWith your funny clothes and your squishy noseYou're like a German parakeetAll right so people say that you don't careBut you've got nicer legs than HitlerAnd bigger tits than CherHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were here

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others

I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our Ecunemic Council; you abdicate reason, as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself Mr. Ratcliffe, you are a Cardinal.

...Bin Laden's quotes from the Quaran resonated in my brain: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck." "If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place." "Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them, besiege them, ambush them." "You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.

The grain of evil seed had been sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodliness had it brought up unto this time? and how much shall it yet bring forth until the time of threshing come?

The very fact that 'the mystical' is seen as irrelevant to issues of social and political authority itself reflects contemporary, secularized notions of and attitudes toward power. The separation of the mystical from the political is itself a political decision!

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

They accepted my donation, so they're aware they'd better serve my interests or I'll buy some leadership that will.

Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries, the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water.

...it happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an "assault upon society" and is branded as "Socialism.

Conflict is much the same, injustice and inequality is nothing new to our generation only the contest has changed because not only that everyone has opinion but they also have an opportunity to voice it and that is a bit dangerous.

We tend to make up [stories] in the same circumstances in which people come up with conspiracy theories: ignorance and powerlessness. And they share the same flawed premise as most conspiracy theories: that the world is way more well planned and organised that it really is. They ascribe a malevolent intentionality to what is more likely simple ineptitude or neglect. Most people are just too self-absorbed, well-meaning, and lazy to bother orchestrating Machiavellian plans to slight or insult us. It's more often a boring, complicated story of wrong assumptions, miscommunication, bad administration, and cover-ups - people trying, and mostly failing, to do the right thing, hurting each other not because that's their intention but because it's impossible to avoid.

That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

I was born in the house my father built.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say “Russia!” to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, “How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

A question which can be answered without prejudice to the government is not a fit question to ask.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.

A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off.

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

God always have a perfect way for every imperfect situations.

The naively cynical measure a piece of legislation, a victory, a milestone not against the past or the limits of the possible, but against their ideas of perfection...

One of the most damaging myths of our time is that poor countries live in poverty because of a conspiracy of the rich countries, who arrange things so as to keep them underdeveloped, in order to exploit them.

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

...if that Watergate case ever gets into court, he might get very nervous.

Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely a good news.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.

Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

You don't get to be the president of anything if you have bad manners.

Only a person who perceives that all human beings are important can become a great leader.

One of the most important qualities of a president is the ability to inspire, to bring people together for the common good.

The enemy was not the Klan but the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.

If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.

The Republicans believe in the minimum wage -- the more the minimum, the better.

The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till out political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, - a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

If there was one thing I had learned. . . it was that politics was a damn dirty business.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Do you know where your breakthrough begins? Your breakthrough begins where your excuses ends.

Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.

At a time like this maybe the world is looking at us not just at a miracle crusade or sunday church service but the way we are living. Maybe they want to see whether what our Master left for us worked for us; there is a counter spirit to the spirit of fear, it is the love of God.

In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.

The more profoundly we study this wonderful book [the Bible], and the more closely we observe its divine precept, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.

Geckos could caught by hand, but they could be found in the men's room.