Quotes About Politics

History is politics projected into the past.

To many political planners and policy-makers in the Western world, Africa remains an irritating appendage to the human community.

We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. ... I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. ... Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship.

Another U.S. official disturbed by the prospect of a Washington-Tokyo truce was the Treasury's Harry Dexter White. "Persons in our government," White declaimed, "are hoping to betray the cause of the heroic Chinese people.

The plan was typical of the way the German officer corps had come to see strategic problems in a vacuum, entirely from their narrow viewpoint, and without recourse to the nuances of diplomacy or the needs of politics.

A conservative in the purest sense, he'd entered politics to defend the ruling propertied classes from the ravages of democracy and an expanding franchise. For him, the upper classes represented the best of human endeavour—birth, intelligence and culture—and they deserved to rule; inherited wealth, he believed, made a man less prone to corruption.

Politicians are fools and the games they play are fools games.

And everyone understood that Stalin was one thing and the country was another.

I was like, Then what is it? A republic. It's a republic. Why? Because we elect people to vote for us. That's my point. So why is it like that? Because if it was a democracy, everybody would have to decide about everything. I thought about that. We could have everybody vote. From the feeds. Instantaneous. Then it would be a democracy.

Man is at his most stubborn when his religious, socioeconomic, or political beliefs need change.

O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom! (O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!)

If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We're a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

First of all, I don't think fascism is an ideology. I think it is a method, it's a system.

Disgusting Serbs, get out!

The religious scholars I have consulted are passionate about the need for political leaders to educate themselves in the varieties of faith and to see religion more as a potential means for reconciliation than as a source of conflict.

President Trump's eyes light up when strongmen steamroll opposition, brush aside legal constraints, ignore criticism, and do whatever it takes to get their way.

SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY—ANGRY, JOWLY, AND PERPETUALLY indignant—had the instincts of a Mussolini, but without the intellectual foundation. Like Il Duce, he was a showman who loved politics and craved power. Unlike him, he began his public life largely ignorant of policy.

a Fascist who launches his career by being voted into office will have a claim to legitimacy that others do not.

the conservatives saw the Fascist leader as someone they could hide behind, manipulate, and, when convenient, replace.

No serious politician has proposed putting America second. The goal is not the issue. What separates Trump from every president since the dismal trio of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover is his conception of how America's interests are best advanced. He conceives of the world as a battlefield in which every country is intent on dominating every other; where nations compete like real estate developers to ruin rivals and squeeze every penny of profit out of deals.

Thus was conceived a phenomenon that would split America from right to left and raise ominous questions—of a type we still face—about whether a democratic citizenry can be talked into betraying its own values.

At many levels, contempt has become a defining characteristic of American politics. It makes us unwilling to listen to what others say—unwilling, in some cases, even to allow them to speak. This stops the learning process cold and creates a ready-made audience for demagogues who know how to bring diverse groups of the aggrieved together in righteous opposition to everyone else.