Quotes by Politicians - Page 72

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
George Washington
A safe army is better than a safe border
B.R. Ambedkar
Having a hearing is educational. Having a hearing with television cameras is useful. Having a hearing with two rows of television cameras is Heaven.
Tim Wirth
If we stand passively by while the centre of each city becomes a hive of depravation, crime and hopelessness…if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other…then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.
Lyndon B. Johnson
If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls." Czechoslovakian foreign minister Jan Masaryk to Lord Halifax as reaction to announcement of allies' betrayal in 1938.
Jan Masaryk
To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business & corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
Theodore Roosevelt
All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.
Barack Obama
Speaking as a Christian, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the apostle Peale appalling.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.
Fidel Castro
I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to.
Theodore Roosevelt
The problem with that analysis is that it is incorrect.
Herman Cain
Politicians sre the same all over.They promise to build bridges, even where there are no rivers.
Nikita Khrushev
I do not intend to defend capitalism or capitalists. They, like everything human, have their defects. I only say their possibilities of usefulness are not ended.Capitalism has borne the monstrous burden of the war and today still has the strength to shoulder the burdens of peace. ... It is not simply and solely an accumulation of wealth, it is an elaboration, a selection, a co-ordination of values which is the work of centuries. ... Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story.
Benito Mussolini
Acknowledging that a woman's right to be safe from a gender-based attack was a "civil right," I believed, was critically important in changing the American consciousness. When a right reaches the status and categorization of a "civil right," it means the nation has arrived at a consensus that is nonnegotiable. Violence against women would no longer be written off ... Once our criminal justice system -- at the local, state and federal levels -- recognized these as serious and inexcusable crimes, women could stop blaming themselves.
Joe Biden
you should not run for president because tactically you can win. The questions you have to ask are why you're running for president and what will you do when you are president. You shouldn't run until you know the answers to those questions.
Joe Biden
But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power... They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No New Taxes' or 'We are a Christian Nation.' In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this new vanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or you were against us. You had to choose sides.
Barack Obama
the Democratic Party had failed (in 1983) 'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here -- moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest -- molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years -- became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.p. 140
Joe Biden
614246"... in an airport in '64, Goldwater said, 'Well, keep punching, Hubert' during a chance meeting there.By the end of 1977, it became increasingly clear that the Boss (Hubert Humphrey) would not be around much longer. And on the Senate floor one day, Barry Goldwater walked across the aisle and enveloped Hubert Humphrey. Goldwater was so big and Humphrey so frail that Humphrey almost disappeared. The two men stood for a long moment, locked in a hug, and I could see that both men were crying. They made no effort to hide it."— Joe Biden (Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics)
Joe Biden
We all know - or at least we are told continuously - that we are a divided people. And we know there's a degree of truth in it. We have too often allowed our differences to prevail among us. We have too often allowed ambitious men to play off those differences for political gain. We have too often retreated behind our differences when no one really tried to lead us beyond them.
Joe Biden
Senator John Stennis:The civil rights movement did more to free the white man that the black man. ... It freed my soul.
Joe Biden
A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.
Henry A. Wallace
If one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you’d better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope!
Bill Clinton
In politics, nothing is contemptible.
Benjamin Disraeli
If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed
Winston S. Churchill
Well, let's see. There's—of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others. But, um.
Sarah Palin
As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.
Leon Trotsky
They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.
George W. Bush
politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
Oscar Ameringer
...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.
Michael Ignatieff
No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Aneurin Bevan
Sex and politics are a lot alike. You don't have to be good at them to enjoy them.
Barry M. Goldwater
A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted--in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest--at the command--of his head.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Lester B. Pearson
The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.
William McKinley
It sucks. I used to be governor of New York.
Eliot Spitzer
In America, disagreement with the policies of the government does not necessitate a lack of patriotism!
Senator Mitchell
People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them, 'How do you think I got the job?
Dick Cheney
To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can't learn at the foot of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down.
Joe Biden
In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor. p. 264
Rory Stewart
We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think... Our failure in recent years has not been the failure of the people to meet the challenges placed before them, but rather the failure of both our great political parties to place those challenges honestly and courageously before the people, and to trust the willingness of the people to do the things that really need to be done.
Joe Biden
We spent time on Burma and the need for the military regime there to understand that they shouldn't fear the voices of people. And yet they do.
George W. Bush
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
Eleanor Holmes Norton
We cannot move forward if we allow the past to pull us back.
Rodrigo Duterte
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socia
Earl Warren
If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game.
Joe Biden
My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be.
Joe Biden
If you're going to play the game properly you'd better know every rule.
Barbara Jordan
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
Alfred E. Smith
Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life.
John F Kennedy
The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it
Aneurin Bevan
When I was older, I found Iqbal's work hugely inspirational. He argued against an unquestioning acceptance of Western democracy as the self-governing model, and instead suggested that by following the rules of Islam a society would tend naturally towards social justice, tolerance, peace and equality. Iqbal's interpretation of Islam differs very widely from the narrow meaning that is sometimes given to it. For Iqbal, Islam is not just the name for certain beliefs and forms of worship. The difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is not merely a theological one - it is a difference of a fundamental attitude towards life.
Imran Khan
We must consult our means rather than our wishes.
George Washington
I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity...
Joe Biden
The senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour. Hubert Humphrey, as quoted by Biden, p. 134
Joe Biden
But all our differences hardly measure up to the values we all hold in common...
Joe Biden
State ownership! It leads only to absurd and monstrous conclusions; state ownership means state monopoly, concentrated in the hands of one party and its adherents, and that state brings only ruin and bankruptcy to all.
Benito Mussolini
One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts.
George Washington
Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
Václav Havel
I don't hate Republicans as individuals. But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do.
Howard Dean