Quotes About Public discourse

The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole of American politics.

Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views.

I think anyone who has an opinion, and voices it, will offend someone.

I want my kids to grow up in a country where, you know, we can still shout questions at the president.

The perpetual threat of conflict—first with one European power, then with another—infused American politics with a sense of constant crisis. Both Federalists and Republicans believed the fate of the United States could turn on the confrontation of the hour. In the broad public discourse, driven by partisan editors publishing partisan newspapers, there seemed no middle ground, only extremes of opinion or of outcome.

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

We need to start talking, to each other, about the issues that matter most. Otherwise, we are just pawns in the game of politics.

Just because you say something doesn't make it controversial, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

Democracy is not just about voting but about informed voting. If democracy doesn't have access to reliable sources of information and instead relies on social proof, then there is no way of distinguishing between junk evidence and actual knowledge.

The NHS was hard to deliver, so was the minimum wage. It's time now - we need to have a proper conversation about how much is the individual cost, how much is the burden that we're all going to share together, and how much are we going to put on older adults now versus a future system like national insurance.

Passion, rather than logic, often drove public discourse.

Much of America is petrified to bring up race, especially in public forums - the media, in particular.

Men and women motivated by faith have every right and obligation to bring their belief and commitment to the public debate. However, that is very different from the governmental establishment of religion that our founders warned against and our constitution prohibits.

We need to balance between two important values, freedom of expression, and social responsibility.

Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media.

I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

The fact is that a liberal Democrat doesn't want to talk about ideology because they don't want to explain publicly what they're really doing.

The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob.

Politics has always been a mud fight - better that citizens jump in the trough than lose interest.

To go from politics to news, at least the subject matter is the same, even if the view is different.

Of course, it's a mystery to me why any American who can't be bothered to pay attention to politics unless Pamela Anderson is discussing it should be welcome in that conversation.

Most people don't want to talk about politics and religion. They say, 'Let's talk about something else.'

After I became a citizen, I felt freer to say what I thought about this country, both negative and positive. I think I had been, consciously and subconsciously, biting my tongue in the past.

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that… may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.