Quotes About Politics

the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee used to advise against the 'fundamental fallacy' of believing that 'it is possible by the elaboration of machinery to escape the necessity of trusting one's fellow human beings'.10

We should by now have learned that politics remains national, even if economics does not: the history of the 20th century offers copious evidence that even in healthy democracies, bad political choices usually trump 'rational' economic calculations.

Democracies in which there are no significant political choices to be made, where economic policy is all that really matters—and where economic policy is now largely determined by nonpolitical actors (central banks, international agencies, or transnational corporations)—must either cease to be functioning democracies or accommodate once again the politics of frustration, of populist resentment.

There is a widespread sense that since 'they' will do what they want in any case—while feathering their own nests—why should 'we' waste time trying to influence the outcome of their actions.

we lose faith not just in parliamentarians and congressmen, but in Parliament and Congress themselves.

had brought Stalin credibility and influence, in the counsels of governments and on the streets.

just want one grown-up in parliament, just one. Or maybe two. I wouldn't want the only one to die of loneliness. One person who will not take a party line of safe in-between wishy-washiness, who will say, this is evil, this is wrong, not only that, this is silly, I won't support it .

I believe in absolutely nothing except yeast and the inevitability of politicians.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.

The best enemies are fabricated enemies for two reasons: one, we have nothing to worry about, and two, the populace falls in line.

While Billy Graham welcomed the adoption of the National Day of Prayer, he saw it as merely the beginning of the political and moral transformation needed to save the nation. In late 1951, he insisted that "the Christian people of America will not sit idly by during the 1952 presidential campaign. [They] are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters.

Thus, throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Fifield and like-minded religious leaders advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics that one observer aptly anointed "Christian libertarianism.

In many ways, these three basic "fault lines" of division—the economic, racial, and political lines Obama outlined, plus a fourth line on gender and sexuality—had always been part of the national experience. For much of the twentieth century, however, strong centripetal forces pushed back against these traditional sources of discord and tension.

They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume are good people." Many Americans expressed outrage at these views, but in fact Trump was just repeating a message that had long been normalized on both sides of the political aisle.25

As ideas of American identity continue to evolve, so America First must continually produce new enemies against which to define its own supposed pure vision of America.

The choice," he insisted, "boils down to this: 'Christ or Communism.' There is really no other. Those in between—playing neutral—are literally playing into the hands of the enemy."24

But then, in 2016, Trump announced his own presidential candidacy on a platform of America First, and he stopped repudiating the really staunch Right wacko vote. David Duke quickly endorsed Trump, saying he was "overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I've championed for years. My slogan remains America first.

In all, the United States today has five inhabited territories that contain more than 3.6 million people. Those people cannot vote for president, have no voting representatives in Congress, lack full constitutional protection, and suffer the predictable effects. All five territories are poorer, per capita, than the poorest US state.

During the reign of President Donald Trump, who pandered to white nationalists and promised to protect monuments to the Confederacy, the GOP reverted to its earlier form with a vengeance. Due to the success of the Southern Strategy, Republicans are now unrecognizable as the party of Lincoln.

Paul Weyrich, who was a cofounder of the Heritage Foundation, gave a talk in 1980 where he laid out what would become the blueprint for GOP victory. He chastised the audience for believing in "Good Government" where they wanted "everybody to vote." "Well, I don't," he said, because "our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.

The new ethnic politics is a direct challenge to the WASP conception of America," the Slovak American intellectual Michael Novak noted in his 1972 book, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics.

This bright line soon blurred. Republicans, who sent nearly two dozen African Americans to Congress in the late nineteenth century, relaxed their commitment to racial equality as the twentieth century began. Southern Democrats still led the way in entrenching disfranchisement and discrimination, but northern Republicans now offered tacit acceptance or explicit approval.

By the early decades of the twentieth century, Republicans and Democrats each had made peace with white supremacy. Notably, when the Klan revived in the 1920s, the second version found supporters in both parties: Democrats in the South, Republicans in the Midwest.