Politics Quotes

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

~ H.l. Mencken

Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s a good bet you remember ‘No new taxes’ and ‘Out of the loop’ and ‘No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time’ and Did not inhale’ and ‘Did not have sex with that woman’ and etc. etc. It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot. So who wouldn’t fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect?

~ David Foster Wallace

Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?

~ Arun D. Ellis

If this is the price to be paid for an idea, then let us pay. There is no need of being troubled about it, afraid, or ashamed. This is the time to boldly say, “Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another; I believe in the total disintegration and dissolution of the principle and practice of authority; I am an Anarchist, and if for this you condemn me, I stand ready to receive your condemnation.

~ Voltairine De Cleyre

Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.(Said to President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner)

~ Stephen Colbert

The Republicans believe in the minimum wage -- the more the minimum, the better.

~ Harry Truman

Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.

~ Dave Barry

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

~ Terry Eagleton

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

~ Winston S. Churchill

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

~ Wilhelm Reich

I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.

~ Ken Kesey

Some leaders are born women.

~ Geraldine Ferraro

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

~ Taylor Caldwell

Donald Rumsfeld. Love him or hate him, you've gotta admit: a lot of people hate him.

~ Jon Stewart

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.

~ Ann Coulter

Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...

~ Raymond Chandler

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.

~ George Carlin

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

~ Frank Herbert

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

~ Alastair Reynolds

In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

~ Thomas Jefferson

from Bill Clinton speech- People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...

~ Bill Clinton

Spending time looking for what is missing in your life is futile; if you fail to look within yourself. When we challenge everything we believe we are, we reveal that which we never knew about our own selves.

~ Nicolas G. Janovsky

It is not power that corrupts but fear.

~ Aung San Suu Kyi

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

~ John Le Carré

We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists.

~ Bill Maher

If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.

~ Esther M. Friesner

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling...

~ V.s. Naipaul

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

~ Henry A. Wallace

I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.

~ Tom Clancy

As far as I'm concerned, I'm a middle-of-the-road moderate and the rest of you are crazy.

~ Ann Coulter

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.

~ Gustave Flaubert

Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation

~ Julia Kristeva

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish - where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source - where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials - and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act agains

~ John F. Kennedy

If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?

~ Will Rogers

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.

~ Marshall Mcluhan

I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican.

~ Barbara Ehrenreich