Quotes About Politics

We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.

It is the pathology of modern politics that we have become so disgusted with self-government that our automatic response to government is criticism. Freedom is always freedom from government; liberty is always liberty from what government would otherwise do.

When you think about a presidential candidate spending all of his or her time talking to that tiny, tiny fraction of us who have the capacity to fund political elections, it's obvious why the perspective of government is skewed relative to what most Americans care about.

All political movements are like this -- we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.

The top rockers have a mythic aura about them, the "superstar," and that's a basically unhealthy state of things, in fact it's the very virus that's fucking up rock, a subspecies of the virus I spoke of earlier that infests our culture from popstars to politics.

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that, then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow the skunks to choose the weapons.

Communism has ceased in general to be an intellectual problem, remaining simply a matter of governmental power and repression.

Leninism raised political opportunism to the dignity of a theory.

In a certain limited sense Chinese Communism is more egalitarian than the Soviet variety; not, however, because it is less totalitarian, but because it is more so.

In fact, you cannot condemn torture on political grounds, because in most cases it is perfectly efficient and the torturers get what they want. You can condemn it only on moral grounds and then, necessarily, everywhere in the same way, in Batista's Cuba or in Castro's Cuba, in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam.

like all over-thrown Communist leaders he became a democrat as soon as he was ousted from power.

In politics, being deceived is no excuse.

George W. Bush has a new campaign slogan: "A reformer with results." I don't know what it means [but] I think it's better than his old campaign slogan: "A dumb guy with connections."

I feel like Bush presidencies are like "Godfather" films. You should stop at two.

President Bush says he now wants to simplify the tax code. Only those in the blue states will pay.

The senator got so tired on the campaign trail that he started kissing hands and shaking babies.

It makes perfect political sense. We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

Janet was in charge of relations with foreign powers—Quentin called her Fillory Clinton.

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.

Dick Cheney ... and that's all I gotta say. Isn't it great that we've reached that point? You don't even have to say "Dick Cheney, the Vice President who shot his friend in the face while hunting". "Dick Cheney", everybody goes "Waha!" and we move on.

I was home alone watching George Bush speak on television. So it was just really the two of us. And as I listened to him, I realized, that one of us ... was nuts! And for the first time ever, I went "Wow, it's not me!"

Republicans have nothing but bad ideas and Democrats have no ideas.