Quotes About Politics

Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say.

In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled.

Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated-- but not in politics... We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer.

Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It's not the will of the people, remember; it's the will of the majority.

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.

We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.

Lord Acton's famous dictum "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Nationalism is about putting the (ethno-)nation above liberal-democratic and leftist values alike. Once one takes that step, one is not separated from other nationalists by anything irreducible.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state, than that cunning men pass for wise.

For as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within.

The power of a government by discussion as an instrument of elevation plainly depends—other things being equal—on the greatness or littleness of the things to be discussed.

At an election the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled.

Our guns and our ships are not, perhaps, very good now. But they would be much worse if any thirty or forty advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament, beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted.

France expects, I fear, too little from her Parliaments ever to get what she ought.

Though the leaders of party no longer have the vast patronage of the last century with which to bribe, they can coerce by a threat far more potent than any allurement—they can dissolve. This is the secret which keeps parties together.

If France had more men of firm will, quiet composure, with a suspicion of enormous principle and a taste for moderate improvement: if a Whig party, in a word, were possible in France, France would be free.

Liberals believe they own the franchise on minorities and can't stand any Hispanic or black who breaks rank.

There is no news media. There's simply a bunch of people on television and in newspapers who are ranking members of the Democrat Party.

Nothing irritates me more than going to see an artist and paying all this money and then have them rant about very specific political opinions.

I think America has a bad rap right now... and hopefully Obama will change that.

The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.

In a liberal democracy rapid, radical and fundamental economic change must benefit the many not the few, if it is to gain popular, long-term political support.

If you're going to have any kind of political opposition in the 21st century, then it has to be as fundamentally liquid as the rapidly changing society we're living in.

I think people are rapidly losing confidence in the political class, and I don't blame them.