Political Philosophy Quotes

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

~ Joseph Schumpeter

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

~ Gerald R. Ford

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

~ Ronald Reagan

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

~ Ronald Reagan

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.

~ Ronald Reagan

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

~ Thomas Jefferson

​On top of the government-hierarchy you need an unpolluted group of scientists to give a nation the best direction.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Government is a system of morality developed by philosophers and refined by mercenaries.

~ Alex Stein

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.

~ Thomas Sowell

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.

~ John Rawls

...our great modern error is the belief that we must invariably give up one thing in order to have another. But it is possible, for instance, to find comfort, pleasure, and beauty in food, clothing, and shelter. It is possible to find pleasure and beauty and even recreation in work. It is possible to have farms that do not waste and poison the natural world.

~ Wendell Berry

Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs crowned above his fellows, yet I see,Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, Or Murder with his silent bloody fee.

~ Oscar Wilde

Prolific irony - For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn't pronounce the word nuclear.

~ T. Rafael Cimino

Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins...

~ T. Rafael Cimino

Politicians are a higher breed of men. They know that this world is ruthless and that they must live accordingly to cope with it

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

A politician is a man in his natural state

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All of the wars in the world are fueled by power struggles either at individual, national or international levels

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Cathy smiled back ‘Rules were meant to be broken.’‘Don’t disagree,’ Oversteegen replied immediately. ‘Indeed they are. Providin’, however, that the one breakin’ the rules is willin’ t’ pay the price for it, and the price gets charged in full. Which you were, Lady Catharine. I saluted you for it then–at the family dinner table that night, in fact. My mother was infinitely more indisposed thereafter; tottered back t’ her bed cursin’ me for an ingrate. My father was none too pleased either. I salute you for it, again. Otherwise, breakin’ rules becomes the province of brats instead of heroes. Fastest way I can think t’ turn serious political affairs int’ a playpen. A civilized society needs a conscience, and conscience can’t be developed without martyrs—real ones—against which a nation can measure its crimes and sins.

~ David Weber

Believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for lawbreaking.

~ Livy

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

~ John Adams

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

~ Tom Stoppard

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.

~ William F. Buckley Jr.

Democracy is a poor system, the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Success of democracy lies within the analytical thought of a common man.

~ M.h. Rakib

We all know that 97% of the money in the world doesn't exist and that's thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, or should I say fictional reserve banking. He grinned at his own joke, his smile partly hidden by his hair, Money is no longer attached to the Gold Standard, therefore, it isn't based on anything. So when it says, 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand ten pounds,' I have to ask, ten pounds of what? Silence. The world is owned by the rich shareholder, the rich superstar, the rich industrialist, the rich aristocracy. He was now marching around the stage, It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they're rich then they own a part of the world, but they only own it because they've got lots of money. Which means they own part of the 97% of the world’s fictional money, the pretend money that only exists on a computer. He stopped abruptly and stared out at the audience, Which means that if they cashed in their fictional nonexistent money they'd get something like this ten pound note offering to pay the bearer the sum of ten pounds of nothing. He held the note aloft, Which means the rich have managed to buy the entire world with paper nothing that has a value of nothing and we've let them do it.

~ Arun D. Ellis

Politicians are not afraid of their mistakes, they are afraid their mistakes will not succeed

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Only a self capable of being jolted out of its mundane complacency is up to the task of both hearing what repair demands and helping to invent new responses to harms that no preexisting remedy fully comprehends.

~ Jill Stauffer

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

~ Emma Goldman

Deception and privileged secrets are common facets of politics.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

It is hard to hear the truth from people who get paid to distort it.

~ Sean S. Kamali

It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

I would rather write a book without a title if my true friend chooses to live in a million dollar home in London and acts foreign.

~ Duop Chak Wuol

If you are a leader or someone who works for the interest of a community, first make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community. In this way, you will have a good chance of minimizing, perhaps, avoiding the us versus them mentality.

~ Duop Chak Wuol

How can the nation be mightier, without unity of its citizens?

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Regaring Politics: You’ve got your cats on one side and your dogs on the other, someone has to walk the fence and feed the animals. —Kinky Friedman

~ Ray Palla

We are all born to love people and use things. Unfortunately, we grow to love things and use people...

~ T. Rafael Cimino

Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

Typically, in politics, more than one horse is owned and managed by the same team in an election. There's always and extra candidate who will slightly mimic the views of their team's opposing horse, to cancel out that person by stealing their votes just so the main horse can win. Elections are puppet shows. Regardless of their rainbow coats and many smiles, the agenda is one and the same.

~ Suzy Kassem

The difference between Nazism and Communism is just the size of the leader's moustache.

~ Adriano Bulla