Quotes About Politics

and so his secretary of state, Acheson, was told to wait until February 1949, after the election, to present to Congress our changeover from a Western Hemisphere republic to an imperial European polity, symmetrically balanced by our Asian empire, centered on occupied Japan and, in due course, its tigerish pendant, the ASEAN alliance.

Governments often keep their populace in permanent states of vigilance or anxiety against foreign enemies as a control mechanism—the politics of fear.

International politics is not unlike the jungle: smaller and weaker animals require acute intelligence, sensitive antennae, and nimbleness of footing to assure their own self-preservation; the strong—such as elephants—need pay less attention to ambient conditions and can often do as they wish, and others will get out of the way.

Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. —Bertrand Russell

Take Islam out of the equation, and there's a very good chance you'd still find the Middle East at loggerheads with the West.

Politics in Turkey are taken more seriously than they are at home. It was only quite recently that they executed a Prime Minister. We dream of it, but they act.

In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jones will not even figure in a footnote. It will be all economics, politics, battles.

That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.

There's no such thing as gratitude in politics.

Perhaps I should have seen that fanatic gleam, the quick response to a phrase, the magic sound of figures: Fifth Column, Third Force, Seventh Day. I might have saved us all a lot of trouble . . .

You have a sense of humour. I am in favor of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent.

Heroism began where politics stopped.

She said, 'I mean my husband there, Mr Smith – he was Presidential Candidate in 1948. He's an idealist. Of course, for that very reason, he stood no chance.' What could we have been talking about to lead her to that statement?

Philipot was one of the initiates what a triumph that would represent for Papa Doc as he dragged his country down.

The Communists …' He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance.

Britain's socialists might not like imperialism, but they were quite fond of the empire.

after feminist politics and the age of the New Man … no one knows what's going on anymore' (Sierz 2001: 191). This

Medicine, academia, politics, social philosophy, capitalism, even religion all consistently miss the mark. If we base our lives on their precepts, we, too, will miss the mark of our highest calling. The greatest pursuit is not good health, unsurpassed wisdom, economic surplus, political freedom, or even faith that can move mountains. Unconditional, nonjudgmental loving. This is our aim, life's single highest and most rewarding pursuit.

Once again, human history proved that the worst mistake possible in politics was underestimating one's opponents. Van

Washington eats truth and shits spin.

And the country has drifted so far off course, nobody even cares about the truth anymore.

Willie Stark's eternal rule: There is always something.

You ever read American Tabloid, by James Ellroy?

You ever read American Tabloid, by James Ellroy?" "No." "Give it a look. Things weren't quite that crazy, but they were damn close.