Politics Quotes

There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

~ Hilary Mantel

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture.

~ Charles W. Colson

A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted--in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest--at the command--of his head.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

If Paul Revere had been a modern day citizen, he wouldn't have ridden down Main Street. He would have tweeted.

~ Alec Ross

Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what are called 'political opinions' with that grand aspiration after progress with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith, which, in our days, should be the very foundation of all generous intelligence.

~ Victor Hugo

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.

~ David Frum

There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!

~ Sinclair Lewis

Kadafi is a zombie in a pillbox hat, that's what he is!

~ Bill Maher

The King! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don't kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that's all.

~ Alexandre Dumas

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

~ Lester B. Pearson

The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.

~ William Mckinley

It sucks. I used to be governor of New York.

~ Eliot Spitzer

It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

This story is the ultimate example of American’s biggest political problem. We no longer have the attention span to deal with any twenty-first century crisis. We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it – who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum. Which is kind of a big problem, when you think about it.

~ Matt Taibbi

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

~ Glenn Greenwald

as a lobbyist he had long ago concluded there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same: It was always about favors and friends, and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. .....

~ Carl Hiaasen

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

~ Glenn Greenwald

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.

~ Christopher Hitchens

The 'fires'n that produce thick, rarely innocent, often strategic smoke should therefore be scrutinized. they should be known and identified; and when they involve dishonesty, lies, or manipulation, they they should be ignored.

~ Tariq Ramadan

a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel, really it was just the hole that's in the middle of all bagels, 'i need to go read my blog to find out what my politics are

~ Tao Lin

Look at the tyranny of party-- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty-- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes-- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing thier doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults nad licking the shoes of his Southern master.

~ Mark Twain

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven and who believed that nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

~ Eric Hoffer

It is politics to please and hoodwink thoseWho flatter but despise us.

~ Thiruvalluvar

It is only when he speaks German, as now, that he allows himself to lament the enslavement of the world's downtrodden classes. We cannot live in a bubble, Mr. Mundy. Comfortable ignorance is not a solution. In German student societies that I was not permitted to join, they made a toast: 'Better to be a salamander, and live in the fire.

~ John Le Carré

The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them..

~ J.g. Farrell

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues....

~ George Orwell

In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.

~ Thomas Paine

Republicans don't want to 'save the world', they want to save the country from those who would 'save the world.

~ Richard D. Kahlenberg

In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

~ George Orwell

The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

~ Alexandre Dumas

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.

~ Tariq Ali

Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins.

~ Matt Taibbi

...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.

~ Michael Ignatieff

At a conservative estimate, there are probably a million men and women in their twenties and thirties who would happily work long hours doing what most needs to be done, if they were paid something for it.

~ Philip Slater

As Dio observed later, democracy sounded very well and good, “but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them.

~ Stacy Schiff

I didn`t change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.

~ Charlton Heston

He may be incensed, said Dizzy. I've never doubted the old parson's faith, but it has no place in politics. Good God, just imagine if each man allowed himself to be swayed by moral compunctions; we'd never get a damned thing accomplished in Parliament.

~ Carol K. Carr

I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.

~ George Soros

In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?

~ Fulton J. Sheen