Quotes About Politics

Of course, government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind;

It seems that the savage autocracy, any more than the divine democracy, does not limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It devours its friends and servants as well.

We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal than with politics

Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights.

If economic power in a country becomes too unevenly distributed, political consequences will follow. While we typically think of the rule of law as being designed to protect the weak against the strong, and ordinary citizens against the privileged, those with wealth will use their political power to shape the rule of law to provide a framework within which they can exploit others.9

It is not particular judges who are bought but the laws themselves, through campaign contributions and lobbying, in what has come to be called "corruption, American-style." In some states judges are elected, and in those states there's an even closer connection between money and "justice." Monied interests use campaign contributions to get judges who are sympathetic to their causes.

Antes que una reforma económica habrá que hacer una reforma política.

el Brexit en Reino Unido y la elección de Donald Trump en Estados Unidos— plantearon dudas respecto a la sabiduría de los electorados democráticos.

especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote.

Trump doesn't have a plan to help the country; he has a plan to continue the robbery of the majority by those at the top.

Reagan redirected the country's economy, but he also crystallized a redirection of values toward more materialism and more selfishness. The failure of his approach to yield the fruits that had been promised did not result in the course correction that one would have hoped. It led only to a doubling down on a flawed set of ideas.

Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America's moral authority, so the Bush administration's fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.

El mismo presidente George H. W. Bush llamó a la política económica de Reagan de subsidio a la oferta economía vudú. La de Trump es una economía vudú con esteroides.

Como Trump, Reagan explotaba el miedo y la intolerancia: en su caso, apuntaba que quien había despojado de su dinero a los estadounidenses mejor situados era la reina malvada del Estado de bienestar. El mensaje omitía, por cierto, a los afroamericanos.

Y hay otras semejanzas entre Reagan y Trump: una de ellas es la voluntad abierta de servir a los intereses de las grandes corporaciones

The failures in politics and economics are related, and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy provides ample opportunity for laws and regulations—and the administration of them—to be designed in ways that not only fail to protect the ordinary citizens against the wealthy but also further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of society. This

La economía no es un juego de suma cero; la política económica afecta al crecimiento, y las acciones que aumentan la desigualdad ralentizan el crecimiento, especialmente a largo plazo.

In an otherwise perfectly mediocre presidency, the one savvy thing John F. Kennedy did, at least for his own reputation, was to bring these Cambridge intellectuals on board.

Politically, he was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.

Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating un-American activities in Germany.

He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.

Taking on Washington was the fastest way to commit political suicide in the revolutionary era.

There was in Madison's critical assessment of the state governments a discernible antidemocratic ethos rooted in the conviction that political popularity generated a toxic chemistry of appeasement and demagoguery that privileged popular whim and short-term interests at the expense of the long-term public interest.

He found himself in the ironic position of being the indispensable man in a political world that regarded all leaders as disposable.