Quotes About Politics

In a book called Why Americans Hate Politics, E. J. Dionne says, "Americans hate politics as it is now practiced because we have lost all sense of the public good."4 Without the conviction that there exists an objective good, public debate disintegrates into a cacophony of warring voices.

A secular approach to politics first took root in the universities, the seedbed where worldviews are planted and nurtured. As William Galston of the Brookings Institution explains, in the modern age, scholars decided that the study of politics must be "scientific"—by which they meant value free.1 As a consequence, political theory was no longer animated by a moral vision. It became purely pragmatic.

Secular ideologies preach liberty but practice tyranny.

If I cry, it's about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics - no, I don't cry.

Let's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people, that we have a responsibility to find our common ground, to seek it and to find it.

You demonize...we call it the wrap-up smear, you smear somebody with falsehoods and all the rest, and then you merchandise it and then you write it and say, See, it's reported in the press that this, this, and this... so they have that validation that the press reported the smear and then it's called a wrap-up-smear and the merchandise is the press' report on the smear we made. It's a tactic, and it's self-evident.

We have learned that "politics is downstream from culture, not the other way around," says Bill Wichterman, policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "Real change has to start with the culture. All we can do on Capitol Hill is try to find ways government can nurture healthy cultural trends.

The movies were custard compared to politics.

The pursuit of truth, as a form of political action, is inherently disruptive, anti-authoritarian, and dangerous to those content with the way things are.

Liberal hand-wringing over the electoral victory of the far-right in Italy will not extend to its core ideology: anti-migration. The EU will continue to support Italy's abandonment and terrorizing of people on the move. Anti-migrant politics truly is the fascist foot in the door.

You do remember," continues Semple, "that they turned overnight when the Shah fell and the Ayatollah came to power? You do remember that it happens that quickly?

The parties with the most gain never show up on the battlefield.

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.

when the consequences of our scientific conclusions are non-epistemic—i.e., when they are moral, ethical, political, or economic—it is almost inevitable that our values will creep into our judgments of evidence.

Barry Goldwater famously argued that extremism in the defense of liberty was no vice. Our story will show that it is.

A 1994 FOREST report entitled "Through the Smokescreen of Science: The Dangers of Politically Corrupted Science for Democratic Public Policy" claimed much the same thing as Fred Singer had: that science was being rigged to advance a political agenda. Whether or not that was true, this report made clear that the inverse was certainly true: science was being attacked to advance their agenda, the defense of free market capitalism.

The committee was divided, but it was divided 8–1, with the dissenter appointed by the Reagan White House.

Many years later, the right wing continued to lambast Sagan well after the man was dead, while Seitz's attack on nuclear winter was reprised by Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s and by novelist Michael Crichton in the 2000s.110 What was going on? The answer is that the right-wing turn against science had begun.

'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles.

C'est avec des hochets que l'on mène les hommes." Napoléon Bonaparte à propos de la légion d'honneur, qu'il institua en 1802.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men.