Quotes About Politics

Virtually every politician portrayed in film or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exagerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system. (III - From Corporatism to Democracy)

He who burns with ambition to become aedile, tribune, praetor, consul, dictator, cries out that he loves his country and he loves only himself.

Governments produced by the most banal of electoral victories, like those produced by the crudest of coups d'état, will always feel obliged to dress themselves up linguistically in some way.

Like other ideologies, that of free trade contains unspoken contempt for the individual citizen. It is a despairing response to the complexities of the real world and the politics of despair always replace choice with inevitability. Indeed despair is the natural tone of economists when they are selling their theories of salvation.

Bolshevism?

Sri Lanka's problems were caused by too much democracy.

It doesn't matter. As long as the government pretends it's a secret, the pretense, no matter how thin, gives it certain advantages. Or it thinks it does. Politics is weird that way.

I'm against abortion as a form of birth control, and I basically hold to the Reagan position.

I like it because their view of government is essentially the same as mine, and I like it because they're regular people who, but for the shock of Obama's radicalism, probably would not have gotten active in politics.

Individual liberty is the whole purpose of political life, and I thought it was threatened then [in 1964 becoming politically engaged at age 15] and I think it's threatened now.

I believe that the leaders of both political parties must try to work through our differences. And I believe we will be able to work through differences. I reassured the House and Senate leaders that I intend to work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way to address issues confronting this country.

I've heard over and over that people don't vote on the basis of foreign policy.

People have said to me, 'Well, if you ran you might get more speaking appearances, and you could sell another book.' Frankly, that's the last thing on my mind. If I get in, I'll get in to win.

...as I followed his [candidate Obama] obsession with restructuring our entire domestic way of life, it became completely clear to me that our willful ignoring of national-security policy was going to cost us...I was watching what was happening in 2008, and I thought, How can this be?

The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.

Inhabited by an endless stream of mountebanks, bigots, thieves, embezzlers, and bribe-takers, it would be challenging to violate the dignity of Mexico's legislatures.

there are as many nuts on the left as there are on the right, and in the long run, the lefties are probably more dangerous.

There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was, 'Well, I hope so.'

Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor, that has an army at his heels.

I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

It's not about electing the right people. It's about a narrowing their responsibilities.

The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians.