Quotes About Politics

This book will show that while economic institutions are critical for determining whether a country is poor or prosperous, it is politics and political institutions that determine what economic institutions a country has.

The most common reason why nations fail today is because they have extractive institutions.

Our theory has attempted to achieve this by operating on two levels. The first is the distinction between extractive and inclusive economic and political institutions. The second is our explanation for why inclusive institutions emerged in some parts of the world and not in others. While the first level of our theory is about an institutional interpretation of history, the second level is about how history has shaped institutional trajectories of nations. Central

The essence of the iron law of oligarchy, this particular facet of the vicious circle, is that new leaders overthrowing old ones with promises of radical change bring nothing but more of the same.

I never let my politics supersede my manners.

Congress shall also create a tax code weighing more than the combined poundage of the largest member of the House and the largest member of the Senate, plus a standard musk ox.

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.

The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.

Our presidential race is beginning to sound more and more like Harry Potter's duel with the Ministry of Magic.

I think that what went wrong with religion is the same thing that went wrong with politics. Is that it became too money based and too controlling. It's just a weakness that we human beings have for control - we want one thing and then we want more and then we want more.

Let's face it, our representative democracy has broken down. Our government primarily represents the big money boys and stacks the deck against reform movements. Playing only by the system's rules limits you.

The military and the politicians have been the same people for all but the most recent part of human history, and we know that the victor writes the history books.

El soldado entiende que hay veces cuando todos los otros han fallado y entonces tiene que «pagar la cuenta del carnicero» y luchar, sufrir, y morir para arreglar los errores de los políticos y cumplir la «voluntad del pueblo».

politics was a necessarily dirty game of treachery and deceit.

Those who wish to preserve political power structures are often very keen on genetic determinism.

Hobbes encouraged a new interest in human nature and a belief that governments only have the right to rule through contract.

I've reluctantly reached after years of watching my old "team" transform into a baying mob of hysterical puritans—a feral gang that sows division through identity politics and encourages societal tribes to rank themselves in a pecking order of "oppression.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, rationalizing Islamic terror had become a progressive position. According to progressives, it was another 2-D argument: brown people = good, white people = bad.

You probably don't want to change the meaning of true halfway through your program (except perhaps if you're a politician).

When the votes of justices in controversial cases can be predicted at the outset, constitutional law simply becomes partisan politics by another name.

They say no one should see how sausage or laws get made,

[On reducing the federal government:] Starve the beast.

Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.

With so many people, democracy is impossible, and corruption is so easy.