Quotes About Politics

That's exactly why the Cagoule was never purged in France; there were more than five hundred army officers involved in the plot, and the Cabinet voted against Léon Blum and Marx Dormoy, who wanted to root them out. The result was, they stayed in the army and went on making appeasement propaganda, even in the midst of war.

The Italians were tireless in giving assurances to their friends; and every evening you could hear the voice of the American poet, Ezra Pound, speaking in English from a station on the Italian Riviera, ridiculing the idea that the ignorant rabble was fitted to govern any country, and hailing Fascism and its "corporate state" as the form of the future society.

Various persons had decided to burn churches and church buildings in Spain, as a means of putting an end to the use of religion in support of political reaction and industrial slavery. Lanny was sorry, because to him these old churches were sanctuaries of art and of such culture as had existed in their day.

that he sold out his convictions mattered less, for the people had become so cynical about public men that they hoped only to find the least dishonest.

Huey Long, unfortunately, had been shot; a shrewd devil, he had said: "It will be easy to bring Fascism in America. Just call it Anti-Fascism.

In the long run, every statesman's acts today are dominated by the dread of social revolution in his own country and those of his neighbors.

Such was the new technique for the conquest of power. Fool those who were foolable, buy those who were buyable, and kill the rest. It was the third Nazi murder of foreign statesmen within a year.

We grant that American citizens who have millions of dollars have a right to use them to poison the public mind; but surely we don't have to grant the right of foreigners to come in and intrigue against us.

No, but I can't help wishing that political and economic problems might be settled by free discussion and majority consent. At least I feel bound to advocate that method for my own country, and for all others which have established the democratic process.

But you know how our kind of people are; we don't like violence and find it hard to believe in. Very sadly I'm beginning to wonder if we Socialists aren't caught between two millstones and destined to be ground up. We think that when we've educated the people and got a majority of the votes, the matter is settled. That is supposed to be the rule in the political game.

So it is that political parties degenerate; so the common people give their devotion to a cause, and discover too late how they have been betrayed.

Adolf Hitler facts had no meaning except as they served his purpose.

The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good.

When the rich go over-board, politically speaking, they go all the way and with all their clothes on. They have been used to having what they want, and patience is apt to be the least of their virtues. Bessie Budd had joined the Communist Party, and she followed the Party line, keeping her eyes fixed upon it so closely that she couldn't even see how it wobbled, and would be greatly irritated if you called her attention to the chart.

might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris. They didn't own it, of course, but they could cause it to be expended by politicians whose careers had been financed by them and whose future was theirs to determine.

The common people of that land of hope and glory adored their war leader, but they didn't want him as a peace leader—a distinction that was clear to them but must have been confusing to Winnie. The Labour party obtained a majority of almost two to one; they got it upon the basis of a definite program calling for the nationalization of the five most important of the nation's industries: coal, steel, transportation, communications, and finance.

When they get through, the country will be in the hands of the very same men who financed Hitler and who will have no idea in the world but to finance some new 'strong' government to keep the Socialists from winning an election.

There, as in France, politicians wanted one thing and businessmen wanted another, and the latter had to pay, but they managed to get back still more. Businessmen knew that wars came and went, but business continued, and its interests were permanent

The fact was, these issues had become so urgent and feelings ran so high that tolerance was too difficult. All over France the various groups isolated themselves, and didn't go where they would meet their political rivals.

Commercial men weren't looked down upon as they had been in old England; for, after all, this was an industrial age, and business and politics were pretty thoroughly mixed. The recent Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, had been an ironmaster, and the present Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, was an arms manufacturer from Birmingham.

Capitalist governments talk about liberty but what they mean is property. If they have to choose between a Nazi and a Red, they are for the Nazi ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

For when you let down the bars and admitted the right to lie and to cheat, you were undermining the very bases upon which human societies are built. Particularly when you admitted the right of political parties to lie and cheat, for how, then, could anybody have faith in them? How could their own followers know what they were or what they would become?

Go forth, my son, and learn with how little wisdom the world is governed!

Here, too, many would scold at the government, but for the opposite reason, that it couldn't keep its mind made up; it was composed of polite old gentlemen who couldn't bear to disturb things or to displease their subordinates, the bureaucrats, no matter what election results came in.