Quotes About Politics

The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician's life. And by practice this becomes extended to so many branches, that the delights, — and also the disappointments, — are very widespread

Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places

But I should never have had patience to sit all night upon that bench in the House of Commons. How men can do it! They mustn't read. They can't think because of the speaking. It doesn't do for them to talk. I don't believe they ever listen. It isn't in human nature to listen hour after hour to such platitudes. I believe they fall into a habit of half-wakeful sleeping, which carries them through the hours; but even that can't be pleasant

We shall see. You may be sure at any rate of this, — that I shall never ask them to do so. Things seem to be so different now from what they did. I don't care for the seat. It all seems to be a bore and a trouble. What does it matter who sits in Parliament? The fight goes on just the same. The same falsehoods are acted. The same mock truths are spoken. The same wrong reasons are given. The same personal motives are at work.

As a portrait should be like the person portrayed, so should a representative House be like the people whom it represents. Nor in arranging a franchise does it seem to me that we have a right to regard any other view. If a country be unfit for representative

if you wish to represent your county in Parliament, as has been done by your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfathers; if you wish to keep a house over your head, and to leave Greshamsbury to your son after you, you must marry money.

Frank Gresham, when twitted with being a Whig, foreswore the de Courcy family; and then, when ridiculed as having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his father's old friends. So

In short, throughout the eighteenth century the English were regularly involved in wars with Catholic France and Catholic Spain.

IRELAND NOW HAD its Parliament formally swallowed up in that of the United Kingdom by an Act which came into force on 1 January 1801.

O'Connell, an Irish Roman Catholic, had been duly elected for Co. Clare nine months earlier.

In the meantime, the question could not even be discussed in the Cabinet, by agreement of the Prime Minister with the King.

On 18 April, five days after the passing of the bill, he took his seat in the House of Lords, with Lord Dormer and Lord Clifford, the first Catholics to do so since the reign of Charles II. There were in fact only eight Catholic peers available – one duke, one earl and six barons – whereas 200 years earlier there had been at least twenty-two. The rest of the titles had one way or another slipped out of Catholic hands.

Neither the Lord Chancellor specifically nor, by implication, the Prime Minister could be Roman Catholics. The latter would be precluded by the clause which forbade any Catholic to advise on ecclesiastical appointments, a duty which comes to the Prime Minister of a country in which there is an officially Established Church.

Catholic priests could not be Members of Parliament.

Anti-Catholicism in England was certainly not eliminated in 1829, just as permanent peace was certainly not achieved in Ireland.

The pattern of Scottish politics was forming once more into the same shapes of family alliances and feuds, in which the power of one noble could not be allowed to grow unchecked, and in which English help was like the joker in the pack of cards.

We had to do something [in Bush v. Gore ], because countries were laughing at us. France was laughing at us.

A man of politics writes about philosophy: it could be that his true philosophy should be looked for rather in his writings on politics. In every personality there is one dominant and predominant activity: it is here that his thought must be looked for, in a form that is more often than not implicit and at times even in contradiction with what is professly expressed.

Politics always lags behind economics, far behind. The state apparatus is far more resistant than is possible to believe; and it succeeds, at moments of crisis, in organizing greater forces loyal to the regime than the depth of the crisis might lead one to suppose. This is especially true of the more important capitalist states.

My lord - the Duke of Lancaster does not wed his paramour, and one of common stock - how could the King countenance this? Well, he has, said John dryly. Richard at present would countenance far more than that to please his eldest uncle and annoy his youngest one.

Even, sometimes, top-down fiat: see the strange case of pad Thai, a Chinese-origin noodle dish (like ramen) that got "Thaified" with tamarind and palm sugar and decreed the national street food by the 1930s dictator Phibun—part of his campaign that included renaming Siam as Thailand, banning minority languages, and pushing Chinese vendors off the streets.

por qué será que todos los que están por encima de la media en filosofía, política, poesía o en las artes parecen ser melancólicos, y hasta cierto punto están incluso amenazados por enfermedades como la bilis negra?

Under every rock lurks a politician.

Politics these days in no occupation for an honest man ... neither educated nor honest, he has to be an ignoramus & a rogue.