Quotes About Politics

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

The motor of our ingenuity is the question 'Does it have to be like this?', from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, better books.

But if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends are often equally bloody. We're familiar with political love that ends in tyranny, where a ruler's firm conviction that he has the true interests of his nation at heart ends up lending him the confidence to murder without qualms (and 'for their own good') all who disagree with him. Romantic lovers are similarly inclined to vent their frustration on dissenters and heretics.

The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.

A popular perception that political news is boring is no minor issue; for when news fails to harness the curiosity and attention of a mass audience through its presentational techniques, a society becomes dangerously unable to grapple with its own dilemmas and therefore to marshal the popular will to change and improve itself.

The prestige of the news is founded on the unstated assumption that our lives are forever poised on the verge of critical transformation thanks to the two driving forces of modern history: politics and technology.

Never be prime minister at the start of a war, Nessie [..] The man that lead you into it isn't the one to lead you out of it.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks, circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Henry Wallace: "The idea of freedom . . . is derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity."39 And Christianity is the only genuine source and sustainer of democracy

Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.

There are many sides to this difficult problem. And people persist in discussing soil-erosion, and tribal decay, and lack of schools, and crime, as though they were all parts of the matter. If you think long enough about it, you will be brought to consider republics, and bilingualism, and immigration, and Palestine, and God knows what. So in a way it is best not to think about it at all.

you don't get far in political discourse with counterfactual arguments that "it would have been even worse.

We form many of our political opinions through reading papers and unconsciously absorbing the rhetoric of the journalists. Later, we spout the same opinions as our own. This parallels the way we respond to any authority and its something politicians understand well.

This renewed politics of otherness not only allowed entire categories of poor whites to develop a powerful sense of racial belonging, but also allowed entire categories of erstwhile nonwhite immigrants (the Irish are the most prominent example) to become white.

Socialism is Bolshevism with a shave.

My father said, 'Politics asks the question Is it expedient Vanity asks Is it popular But conscience asks Is it right'

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to systemic reform was that it required numerous stakeholders - textbook publishers, test publishers, schools of education, and so on - to change, which turned out to be an insurmountable political obstacle.

Challenge your self to read what your children are forced to endure, and then ask why we expect that textbooks - written and negotiated line by line to placate politically active interest groups in Texas and California - are up to the task of supplying a first-rate curriculum.

I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

The Irish Economy Since 1922.

Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." There was a short window for the new Obama administration, "an opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before

THE PENDULUM OF POLITICS is always swinging. Republicans gain seats, Democrats win them back, and the struggle continues. The one thing that seems inevitable no matter the party in office is the continued growth of government. Occasionally, however, a fresh jolt of conservative energy interrupts that growth.