Quotes About Politics

I never read the paper myself. Why bother? It's the same old shit day in and day out, dictators beating the ching-chong out of people weaker than they are, men in uniforms beating the ching-chong out of soccer balls or footballs, politicians kissing babies and kissing ass.

Seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, the world is still here even though many nations have atomic weapons, even though primitive human emotions still hold sway over rational thought and superstition masquerading as religion still guides the course of human politics.

I read more than I had in years-novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President).

Each of these four coups was launched against a government that was reasonably democratic (with the arguable exception of South Vietnam), and each ultimately led to the installation of a repressive dictatorship.

They led to the fall of leaders who embraced American ideals, and the imposition of others who detested everything Americans hold dear.

Americans overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones.

the idea of invading Iraq was first urged on him after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, he could not fail to recognize it as a way to have his revenge, complete the job his father had begun, and redeem his family's honor.

because he had such an ingrained and perhaps exaggerated faith in democracy, he did nothing to repress it.

In the mid-1950s Winston Churchill advised his American friends to recognize that Ho Chi Minh was unbeatable, accept his victory, and try to make the best of it. This the Dulles brothers could not do—because they were Americans.

the idea of using the Roman Catholic clergy to turn Guatemalans against Arbenz. Catholic priests and bishops in Guatemala, as in other Latin American countries, were closely aligned with the ruling class, and they loathed reformers like Arbenz.

member parties were ordered to organize along Leninist lines to combat "petit-bourgeois deviation

I don't understand how we can fight the Communist Party under the leadership of the Communist Party ... I don't understand why perestroika is being carried out by the same people who brought the country to the point where it needs perestroika.

Almost all rightists believed that autocracy ipso facto ruled out opposition, which of course ruled out their own opposition.

could serve as a political elixir: everything that went awry could be, and was, blamed on the Jews.

IN 1910, AFTER THEODORE ROOSEVELT met Kaiser Wilhelm II, the former American president (1901–9) confided in his wife, "I'm absolutely certain now, we're all in for it.

Stalin's moods were becoming almost as difficult to parse as the intentions of the Soviet Union's external enemies.

Stolypin, frowned on the public "disorder" of political mobilization, and wanted politics to return from the street to the corridors of power.

He deemed the Georgian "an insincere, masked dictator who plays with people.

The talk around the congress was that "Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin took them out of the Central Committee."305

Trotsky cut in: "'Collective leadership' is precisely when everyone hinders each other or everyone attacks each other.' (Laughter).

It is hard to know which threatened the army more: the primitive material base or the paranoid class politics.

The fundamental fact about him was that he viewed the world through Marxism.

While Churchill was relieving himself, one of the leading nationalizers entered the room and began doing his business right next to Churchill. The irritated conservative moved to the far end of the trough. "Feeling a bit stand off-ish today, Winston?" the new arrival asked mockingly. "No," growled Churchill. "But whenever you see anything big, you want to nationalize it.

men know that Churchill was stating a broad truth about an important matter. You liberals are nationalizing everything you can in our society. But, listen up: it isn't yours! It shouldn't be nationalized just because it is big! And you're probably just envious anyway!