Quotes About Politics

A Republican, then?" Jack asked, after a moment. "Oh, for God's sake." Olive stopped walking, looked at him through her sunglasses. "I didn't say moron. You mean because we have a cowboy for a president? Or before that an actor who played a cowboy? Let me tell you, that idiot ex-cocaine-addict was never a cowboy. He can wear all the cowboy hats he wants. He's a spoiled brat to the manor born. And he makes me puke.

She called Christopher. "He's a Republican," she said. "Well, that's gross," Christopher answered.

destruction. Peru's President Castañeda

On the contrary, the characteristic element of the present situation is that economic questions have finally and irrevocably invaded the domain of public life and politics.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

First, those who seemed to be trying to stop further revolution might actually be allies in preserving it. Second, the real threat would come from someone who until now had been entirely removed from events, and who had the smallest political following of anyone in Russia, namely Lenin.

One of the votes against war came from the very first woman ever to sit in the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin

In a 1948 essay, Toynbee blamed all the false and brutal political movements of the modern world on this baneful Jewish influence, including both Communism and Nazism.

the purpose of all these rules and regulations was to end what Plato saw as the worst aspect of normal Greek politics: the bitter class conflict and clashes among competing factions. In the average Greek city, rich and poor were literally out for each other's blood

Aquinas demonstrates how the laws of nature could unlock the mysteries of why and how human beings built communities, how and why they framed laws, and how they interacted with one another in society. His analysis of the role of natural law in politics would set off a revolution that had huge consequences for the future.

It was Aristotle who first made private property the basis of the good life and the independent householder the basis of the free polis.18 The world of the Enlightenment took him firmly at his word.

Aristotle's Politics, like his Metaphysics, turns Plato's system upside down.

For Plato, we find our true freedom only when we find our proper place within the political community. Aristotle, by contrast, concludes that community exists to serve the individuals who make it up, not the other way around.

We have been trained to think of Machiavelli as the apologist for power politics. In fact, his passion for the ideal of liberty was so strong

History teaches us what human beings are like in reality rather than what we would like them to be. And when we deal with the sum total of history's record, high-minded ideals like those of Plato's Philosopher Rulers have to be pushed off over the side. Reality teaches a very different set of lessons about politics—and Machiavelli's ambition was to present them to posterity

Rather, it was more beneficial, and ultimately more rational, than ones put together by politicians or rulers, who are themselves creatures of their own passions and whims.

Italy's cities had been left largely to govern themselves since the Dark Ages.

Having seen how the democratic sausage was made, Plato was in no mood to sit at the feast.

By the time of the Great Schism, Italy had descended back into gangster politics, as in the days of Caesar and Pompey.

So the basis of Aristotle's secure and stable order is not the Philosopher Ruler, but the good citizen who participates actively in the political, social, and economic life of his community.

Politics on Plato's terms becomes prescriptive, a series of formulae for shaping man and society into what they should be rather than accepting things as they are. Politics on Aristotle's terms will be largely descriptive, in which the more we discover about human nature, the more we recognize our powerlessness to effect real change.

America, the totem of modern democratic culture, was actually "latently" fascist. The absence of a "genuine" fascist movement in America, like the absence of any "genuine" anti-Semitism, was in fact a sign of how far the corruption had spread. As Herbert Marcuse put it somewhat later, "The fact that we cannot point to an SS or SA here, simply means that they are not necessary in this country."48

The other pacifists sprang forward to continue pummeling the stunned senator

Politics in modern society, then, must involve a tension between two conflicting, but complementary principles: liberty, which preserves individuals, and authority, which preserves society.