Quotes About Politics

Jim Is there no other way? Claire We could just say no to him. Jim Can't risk that. Collapse of conference, collapse of backbench support, collapse of Cabinet. Collapse of my career. The biggest disaster since Dunkirk. Humphrey I think not, Prime Minister. Jim Name a bigger one. Humphrey The Freedom of Information Act.

How the hell are you idiots allowed to run a country? I should have voted for a clown college. They'd at least have a reason for being this stupid.

He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. ~ FDR

Dubya was their public face, and may not have even known it. He's a Texas jokester who couldn't manage a Wal-Mart and the Inner Circle put him in the Oval Office for two terms while they moved behind the scenes." "What about the current administration?" asked Gault. "The Inner Circle doesn't have the same kind of control over this president, which is why they are trying to weaken him and discredit his accomplishments.

When he heard politicians use the phrase "in the best interests of the American people" he knew that it was always a profit-based decision.

They're politicians, and politics is about leverage, not about the truth.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness. —NIELS BOHR

There are others who aim at popularity under the disguise of patriotism.

Not too many professions out there that value forgetfulness. Prostitution, maybe. Politics, of course.

For 100 years, governments of every colour were committed to enlarging the language of citizenship. Now Mrs. Thatcher's government is committed to closing it.

Transactional politics is not always appropriate or effective, but a political system which is not reliably capable of it is a system in a state of critical failure. Deal-making

John Locke, Adam Smith, and James Madison, the big three of modern liberalism

The greater threat lies in our letting down our guard against ourselves: in high-mindedly embracing authoritarianism in the name of fairness and compassion, as the Marxists did. Having been at last rousted out of politics and economics by the disaster of communism, the authoritarian Rasputin has now come calling on liberal science, and he already has his foot in the door.

practically every political reformer in the country—and, for that matter, practically every schoolchild—will tell you that machines are rotten, that careerists are slimy, and that what politics needs is more popular participation, more attention to issues, more transparency, more disinterest, more fresh faces.

Show me a political system without machine politics, and I'll show you confusion, fragmentation, and a drift toward ungovernable extremism.

For many of the same reasons, machines tend to be a force for moderation. They must engage in transactional politics to survive, and that often requires them to put ideology aside, or at least to dial it back, in the interests of holding power.

the continuous and systematic onslaught against political machines and insiders by progressivism, populism, and libertarianism—three very different political reform movements which nonetheless all regard transactional politics as at best a necessary evil and more often as corrupt and illegitimate. This attack, though well intentioned, has badly damaged the country's governability, a predictable result (and one accurately predicted more than fifty years ago).

The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.

The world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today. Politics moves the pieces. Education changes the game.

While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the euro, do the opposite, even if it's hard. Invest in the spirit.

Applying inflexible rules to a constantly shifting political landscape destroys societies. Communism was like that. In free societies, people change, culture changes, the world beyond a nation's borders does not stand still. So a politician will find that what worked a decade or a century ago does not work now. In politics it is easy to get it wrong, hard to get it right.

He is announcing to the most powerful ruler of the ancient world that these people may be your slaves but they are My children. The story of the exodus is as much political as theological. Theologically, the plagues showed that the Creator of nature is supreme over the forces of nature. Politically it declared that over every human power stands the sovereignty of God, defender and guarantor of the rights of humankind.

That is why the market and the state, the fields of economics and politics are arenas of competition, while morality is the arena of cooperation. A society with only competition and very limited cooperation will be abrasive and ruthless, with glittering prizes for the winners and no consolation for the losers.

Religion has lost many of the functions it once had. To explain the world, we have science. To control it, we have technology. To negotiate power, we have democratic politics. To achieve prosperity, we have a market economy. If we are ill, we go to a doctor, not a priest. If we feel guilty, we can go to a psychotherapist; we have no need of a confessor.