Politics Quotes - Page 36

How singular," murmured Maximillian; "your father hates me, while your grandfather, on the contrary -- What strange feelings are aroused by politics.

Alexandre Dumas

Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person.

Robert A. Heinlein

When and where there is repression, what a woman does when she gets dressed in the morning may be considered political. Wearing or not wearing a veil, disobeying laws that prohibit transgender dressing, or wearing a large Afro in an institution that seeks to diminish the formation of racial alliances are all actions that can serve as challenges to domination

Maxine Leeds Craig

It was Abraham Lincoln who struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink of history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress. This is the approach that gave the world, leaders of glorious characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Subhas Chandra Bose (the actual man behind India’s Independence), Vasil Levski (the man who liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman oppression), Nelson Mandela and many more. These people were technically politicians too, but unlike the majority of the politicians ofmodern society, their approach to politics was what it should be in a real system of politics.

As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic— full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it.

You are looking at this wrong. You think I hold my territory by the might of my fist. But that's not it. I hold my territory by consent of the governed. I think it is a very American concept, which might be why you never looked for it." — Adam Hauptman, Columbia Basin Pack Alpha, to Iacopo (Jacob) Bonarata, Lord of the Night (master vampire of Milan)

Patricia Briggs

The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.....The propaganda effect of infallibility, the striking success of posing as a mere interpreting agent of predictable forces, has encouraged in totalitarian dictators the habit of announcing their political intentions in the form of prophecy....Mass leaders in power have one concern wich overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.

Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the "National Security Managers", as they have been recently called by Richard Barnet, who "exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and interpreting the outside world for him".

Whoever wants to hide a big scandal is best to stage a small one

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development.

there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.

You know what politique is? It is the French word for a lie. Kdoub! Politique! When you hear the French say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. And when you hear the Moslems, the Friends of Independence, say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. All lies are sins. And so, which displeases Allah more, a lie told by a Nazarene, who doesn’t know the true faith from the false, or a lie told by a Moslem, who does?

You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon.

I am here not to save money but to make more of it to empower the people and make the world a better place.

No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South.

The “social justice” movement is not at all about social justice, but about relentlessly bullying anyone who does not subscribe to their Stalinist ideology.

Joshua Goldberg

Any man who neglects his conscience is a dangerous animal.

You would think having your arse constantly kissed would be enjoyable, even just a little. But when it’s a nest of snakes trying to latch on—offering a rim job with their flicking, forked tongues—it’s revolting.

...this is how politics is played. With fakery and false smiles and butcher knives to the back.

It'll be an unholy muddle, that's for sure," he was saying. "Me and Hardin and Baker all with our claws out for the same seat. The thing will have to be done carefully or we'll end up with out tidy little Whig house divided.""Why don't you take turns?""It's worth thinking about, but no matter how much you'd like politics to be a cotillion it just naturally wants to be a dirt fight.

Stephen Harrigan

The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal.

Henry Martyn Robert

I’m a politician so I only endorse myself.

In democracy, our most important tool is to vote. But our power tool is when we have the power to influence others on who to vote for.

The moment you vote, you are a citizen. But moment you make your vote public, you are a politician.

Vote; it’s the most important right granted to you as a citizen. But unless you are a politician, stay out of politics because your gains will not change anything and your losses will only make you waste your time and many friendships.

With a [democratic] government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened. While exploitation and expropriation before might have appeared plainly oppressive and evil to the public, they seem much less so, mankind being what it is, once anyone may freely enter the ranks of those who are at the receiving end. Consequently, [exploitation will increase], whether openly in the form of higher taxes or discretely as increased governmental money “creation” (inflation) or legislative regulation.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Osborne paused. “There is... something else.”Clegg sighed.“What?”“Your Wikipedia page.”“What? My-”“It says you're Prime Minister now.”“Well, it was news to me that I'm not, I can't-”“Was it one of your staff?”Silence fell heavily on the room. Clegg tilted his head to one side.“Are you... what are you...” he began.“I'm asking because if it was, it could be... serious.” Another pause. This time, Clegg couldn't help but smile in disbelief.“Are you going to accuse my staff of a constitutional coup for editing Wikipedia?

Tom Black

To the modern politician and planner, men are the flies of a summer, oblivious of their past, reckless of their future.

I also hold a settling of questions by the referendum to be an unsatisfactory procedure, because there are no simple political questions which can be answered merely by Yes and No. The masses are also more prone even than Parliaments to be led away by heterodox opinions, and to be swayed by vigorous ranting. It is impossible to formulate a wise internal or external policy in a popular assembly.

Princes give rewards with their own hands,But death or punishment by the hands of other.

But Frances was beginning to feel that somewhere along the line, property, business, and all that contributes to the creation of wealth, must give back to government enough to guarantee adequate safeguarding of human welfare. The question would be, how to protect human beings against homelessness, starvation, and dependent old age without breaking down human initiative. She was seeing this as one fundamental problem of the government of the future; seeing too that somewhere leaders must arise who will be able to cope with this problem—honest leaders who will see the problem in its many-sidedness, and at last be able to solve it constructively.

May Martin Van Wye

I was born a sheep & I cannot be a goat through pledge of hands.

Ymatruz

Lying bed, I listened to them, and I wonder now where in truth the real power rested that night: whether in the hands of men like Grimston, men like Edwards. Whether it slept with the King at Oxford in an ordinary bed, dormant, like a taint in the blood. Whether it rested on the waiting benches of the Commons, or whether it went home with their plain occupants, like a shilling in each of their pockets.I think the truth is that, rather than resting in any one of several places, all real power had gone loose by that night through the realm; and the land might have belonged to any man. Any man with the will to say, 'This is what we shall do.

Because taxpaying is seen as an emblem of civic worthiness, denying the poor the status of taxpayers has the effect of denying their political standing. Classing a large percentage of the populace as a kind of second-class citizenry is genuinely toxic for democratic norms.

Vanessa Williamson

The heretic is the one who speaks against the community from a place within its territory. He is the enemy within. The heathen, by contrast, is safely behind the walls, excluded by his own invincible arrogance.

Bernstein was impressed by Sloan's thoughtfulness. Sloan seemed convinced that the President, whom he very much wanted to see re-elected, had known nothing of what happened before June 17; but he was as sure that Nixon had been ill-served by his surrogates before the bugging and had been put in increasing jeopardy by them ever since. Sloan believed that the prosecutors were honest men, determined to learn the truth, but there were obstacles they had been unable to overcome. He couldn't tell whether the FBI had been merely sloppy or under pressure to follow procedures that would impede an effective investigation. He believed the press was doing its job, but, in the absence of candor from the committee, it had reached unfair conclusions about some people. Sloan himself was a prime example. He was not bitter, just disillusioned. All he wanted now was to clean up his legal obligations - testimony in the trial and in the civil suit - and leave Washington forever. He was looking for a job in industry, a management position, but it was difficult. His name had been in the papers often. He would not work for the White House again even if asked to come back. He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write. Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind. Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily - that wasn't really what was important. But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.

He believed the press was doing its job, but, in the absence of candor from the committee, it had reached unfair conclusions about some people. Sloan himself was a prime example. He was not bitter, just disillusioned. All he wanted now was to clean up his legal obligations - testimony in the trial and in the civil suit - and leave Washington forever. He was looking for a job in industry, a management position, but it was difficult. His name had been in the papers often. He would not work for the White House again even if asked to come back. He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write. Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind. Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily - that wasn't really what was important. But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.

The political parties are there to distract us from our systems of government; instead of focusing on the system, we focus on political parties to vote for.Voting is our only encouraged interaction with our systems of government.The choice between political parties fractures our nations yet further, turns our focus on each other, and away from the mechanisms of our systems of government.

Haroutioun Bochnakian

Currently the best educated and the brightest minds of any nation are not among its elected, but among its public, and in much greater numbers.But even having a great number of the best and the brightest amongst us does not make us capable of installing a working version of direct democracy right away. People who claim that it does, may be there to voluntarily or involuntarily damage the credibility of direct democracy.Direct democracy needs a yet inexistent infrastructure to support the new mechanism that will render the public capable of constituting the experience necessary to domesticate direct democracy, without destabilizing our societies with needless haste, emotions and fractures. One way of doing it may be the constitution of a nation-wide, internet reliant hence fluid, non-political organism parallel but totally hermetic to our representative democracies, with a unique objective: creating the means, platforms and protocols necessary for the public and all the specialists it contains, to communicate horizontally.The public may decide to keep for the moment our representative democracies, but in parallel create an experimental version of direct democracy until we all acquire the necessary perspective and invent new working mechanisms of self-governance. Later the public may decide to have both representative and direct democracies sharing governance for a time, and experience first-hand the advantages and disadvantages of both systems before deciding where to go from there.

Haroutioun Bochnakian

A nation with a thousand awakened citizens and a corrupt leader, is much more alive than a nation with an awakened leader and a thousand corrupt citizens.

In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.

If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome.

Yuval Noah Harari

I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions

Jyn Erso

The problem with people who have power is that they start thinking more about what it takes to keep that power than they do about whats right or wrong or just plain a bad idea. Here's a tip for you: if you're ever in a position to be making calls on right and wrong that can impact an entire nation, run your decisions past a six year old. If they look at you in horror and tell you you're getting coal in your stocking for the rest of your life, you should probably reconsider your course of action. Unless you want to be remembered as a monster, in which case, knock yourself out.

If the Nazis are Socialists simply because they call themselves Socialists, then North Korea really is a Democratic Republic.

Atom Tate

Why is it so many politicians are wealthy?Is it because they make good investments?Or is it simply.Because they are good investments?

Anthony T.Hincks

His supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show where the dangers are.

Walter Lippmann

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.

The whole notion of disruption is adolescent: It assumes that after the teenagers make a mess, the adults will come and clean it up. But there are no adults. We own this mess.

Politics is an enemy of productivity

Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'

Educated and ambitious, with their own forthright opinions, the women of the Garvey set did more to determine political direction than many councillors. Their involvement in public life and political machinations was such that the Shylonian ambassador was able to report, to his monarch, that the women of the Garvey clique were ‘politicians first, homemakers second.

What had, moments ago, appeared a dangerous gambit, now seemed an elegant coup de maître.

Democracy is an illusion in which we all believe.

Anthony T.Hincks

Leadership by deception isn't leadership. It's fraud.

DaShanne Stokes

When you're dealing with frauds and liars, listen more to what they don't say than what they do.

DaShanne Stokes

Scratch a “libertarian” these days, and you will find...a leftist.

Murray Rothbard

We're roughage," Tyger said. "If we don't cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we're there.

Neal Shusterman

The idea that "Americans hate taxes" has become a truism without the benefit of being true. Instead, Americans see paying taxes as a civic obligation and a political act. To be a taxpayer, Americans believe, is something to be proud of. It is evidence that one is a responsible, contributing, and upstanding member of society, a person worthy of respect in the community and representation in the government.

Vanessa Williamson

The campaign website was funded by Armistead, and he personally authored the content. He was determined that the campaign's values and goals would fit on one page. The website developer, who was experienced with political campaigns, was opposed to this. He lobbied for detailed policy statements and explanations, which was the conventional approach. But Armistead disagreed. The website developer thus learned that day that core principles were more important than thousands of words of speculative verbiage.

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