Politics Quotes

In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous imp

~ David Rakoff

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.

~ Jonah Goldberg

I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me... Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them.

~ David Crockett

Come senators, congressmenPlease heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he that gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThere's a battle outside ragin'.It'll soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your wallsFor the times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

~ Jay Leno

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.

~ Tacitus

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.

~ Carl Schmitt

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

In most of my campaigns, I find it is best not to mention my opponent by name because, by doing so, it just gives him a chance to get into the headlines.

~ Harry Truman

If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

~ Oscar Wilde

They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, just like always. It was appalling how stupid they were, really, and he could not help lashing into them.

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

There is nothing political about American literature.

~ Laura Bush

Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.

~ Thomas Paine

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.

~ Harry Truman

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.

~ Henry A. Wallace

Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay atten

~ Molly Ivins

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time. Winston woke up with the word ‘Shakespeare’ on his lips.

~ George Orwell

When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of that problem is political will; we could take a lot of people off the streets tomorrow if we made it a national priority. But I have also come to realize that NASA had it easy. Rockets conform to the unchanging laws of physics. We know where the moon will be at a given time; we know precisely how fast a spacecraft will enter or exist the earth's orbit. If we get the equations right, the rocket will land where it is supposed to--always. Human beings are more complex than that. A recovering drug addict does not behave as predictably as a rocket in orbit. We don't have a formula for persuading a sixteen-year-old not to drop out of school. But we do have a powerful tool: We know that people seek to make themselves better off, however they may define that. Our best hope for improving the human condition is to understand why we act the way we do and then plan accordingly. Programs, organizations, and systems work better when they get the incentives right. It is like rowing downstream.

~ Charles Wheelan

The country is dying cause of an lack of men, not a lack of programms.

~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resent domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger.

~ Isaac Asimov

Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.

~ Bill Clinton

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

~ T.s. Eliot

Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.

~ Maxim Gorky

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.

~ Greg Bear

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

~ Molly Ivins

Indeed, one concern would be that the initial neoconservative response to a zombie outbreak would be to invade Iraq again out of force of habit.

~ Daniel W. Drezner

Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can't really wake her up, but there's things she's still good for.

~ Cintra Wilson

These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.

~ Paul Krugman

[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.

~ Michael Moore

White men have screwed this country up! I would like a black, female…. everything all rolled into one.I want something different. I want a real change. People, I want a president who speaks well, who has a sense of humor. This guy is such a moron! It's beyond the point where it's a joke. He's an idiot.

~ Denis Leary

...When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.

~ Naomi Wolf

It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains. “Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

~ Suzanne Collins

It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.

~ Tariq Ali

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

~ Henry A. Wallace

We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.

~ Francis A. Schaeffer

I have learned that one should say Peace! to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage.

~ Tariq Ramadan

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

~ Otto Von Bismarck

...all members of Congress should be required wear NASCAR uniforms. You know, the kind with the patches? That way we'd know who is sponsoring each of them. I think he was kidding; they'd never be able to do it but it's a great idea and would wake people up in this country.

~ Brad Thor