c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again.Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.
— T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
Just when the question of how to live had become clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself - Death.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.
— Justin Cronin, The Twelve
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people?
— E.E. Cummings
I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should
— Terry Pratchett, Nation
I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness...I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still that think that, sometimes, maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter...I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take her genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else there entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed...energy is never created and never destroyed. We cannot be born and cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations... Thomas Edison's last words were: It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Death is the privilege of human natureAnd life without it were not worth our takingThither the poor, the unfortunate, and MournerFly for relief & lay their burdens down.
— Elizabeth Fama, Monstrous Beauty
Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I closed my eyes. I used to think I was protecting the world, too. But it wasn't that simple. Nothing was. Who were we to decide that anyone or anything didn't deserve the spark of life they had been given?
— Kiersten White, Paranormalcy
Fretting over how life ends, or anything else for that matter, is a complete waste of time.
— Samantha Sotto
Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?
— Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin
If the inevitably of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
When death tells a story yo really have to listen
— Markus Zusak
My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well?
— Jen Naumann, Shymers
No one lives here for ever ! This Land belongs to the Lord ! So make most of the time u spend here ! You have no liability, but just responsibility , for those who are and will follow their journey on this planet .
— Sushil Kumar
Careful with your life.
— satree
i am n0t aFraiD oV deaTh , I juX dun waNna Be thEre weN iT haPpeNZ !
— Babri Memon
We're always one breath away from something, living or dying, sometimes it just can't be helped.
— Heather Gudenkauf, One Breath Away
A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we come, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
— Chief Crowfoot
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity - it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
There's nothing like love or incumbent death to make you realize how many things you still want to do.
— Monica La Porta, Pax in the Land of Women
Life may suck but death is worse.
— Alane Wilson
Things stayed peaceful in there, even as the crashing vehicles and the cries of the injured and dying reached a crescendo outside. "I fry mine in butter!" indeed.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Timequake
All paths lead to death, our premature sacrifice for future spawn(from Elixir)
— Bryan  Murphy
Two Things to be accepted for sure in life time?1. Birth2. Death
— Deepak Yadav
Though his health and family had been broken in the process, he'd found his purpose in life — to share the ancient key discovered anew in the garden: if we feed the earth, it will feed us.I see that is the secret, too, to living. Though the earth demands its sacrifices, spring will always return
— Melissa Coleman
To them he’s the slightly less frightening alternative to the grim reaper.
— Kat Kruger, The Night Has Teeth
What is this?! I couldn't die back when I would've been glad to die anywhere, anytime, but now that dying would take hardly any effort, suddenly I can't afford to yet? What the hell am I supposed to do?
— Yukako Kabei, Kieli, Volume 7: As the Deep Ravine's Wind Howls
It's only amatter of time, and God's timming never second best
— Nefrida Namira Maaruf
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
— George Orwell, 1984
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
— John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.
— George Clooney
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.
— Frank Zappa
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? But I am done with this creed of corruption. I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I.
— Ayn Rand, Anthem
The federal government did not create the states
—  the states created the federal government.
Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don't understand that we also dream.
— Ronald Reagan
I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.
— Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America
Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.
— Ron Paul
We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too Late’.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Do not forget that the armed forces are the servants of the people. You do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Capitalists' wet dreams is to be involved in charity.
— Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
You cannot take away freedom to protect it, you cannot destroy the free market to save it, and you cannot uphold freedom of speech by silencing those with whom you disagree. To take rights away to defend them or to spend your way out of debt defies common sense.
— Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung
— Abraham Lincoln
Let the revolution begin.
— Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,and whose shepherds mislead them.Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.Pity the nation that raises not its voice,except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as heroand aims to rule the world with force and by torture.Pity the nation that knows no other language but its ownand no other culture but its own.Pity the nation whose breath is moneyand sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erodeand their freedoms to be washed away.My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
… Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle…
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Maybe I`m getting to the age when I`m starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the Right and the Left. 
— Clint Eastwood
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
— James Madison
Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
— Ayn Rand, The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction
An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.
— Mahatma Gandhi
When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter
—  now that I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want to talk about inequality.
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.
— Malcolm X
A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.
— Ron Paul
In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.
— Naomi Klein
It's easier to run a revolution than a government.
— Ferdinand E. Marcos
You can't condemn a whole group of people because of the actions of a few.
— Justin Somper, Blood Captain
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
— Herbert Hoover
I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
— David Sedaris
If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.
— Ami McKay, The Birth House
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
— Mark Twain
It was the call of workers who organized
—  women who reached for the ballot
...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.
— E.J. Dionne Jr.
I turned to books for comfort. (Former First Lady, Laura Bush)
— Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart
I sincerely hope that they (relations between India and Pakistan) will be friendly and cordial. We have a great deal to do...and think that we can be of use to each other and to the world.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.
— Tony Benn
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
States' rights, as our forefathers conceived it, was a protection of the right of the individual citizen. Those who preach most frequently about states' rights today are not seeking the protection of the individual citizen, but his exploitation. . . . The time is long past - if indeed it ever existed - when we should permit the noble concept of States' rights to be betrayed and corrupted into a slogan to hide the bald denial of American rights, of civil rights, and of human rights.
— Robert F. Kennedy
We believe that to govern perfectly it is necessary to avoid governing too much.
— James Hilton, Lost Horizon
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
— Thomas Jefferson
I have always been afraid of banks.
— Andrew  Jackson
When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience.
— Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
History teaches usthat men and nationsonly behave wiselyonce they have exhaustedall other alternatives."--
— Abba Eban, Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes
It is only on the battlefield of ideas that the best ones can be recognized and ultimately prevail. Only those afraid of the truth seek to silence debate, intimidate those with whom they disagree, or slander their ideological counterparts. Those who know they are right have no reason to stifle debate because they realize that all opposing arguments will ultimately be overcome by fact.
— Glenn Beck
Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not violate principles. We do not betray Marxism - Leninism.
— Enver Hoxha
What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make others people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or at the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it must be levity.
— Tom Robbins
Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!
— Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution
The problem is, we have too many cowardly, spineless, selfish people that would sacrifice their children’s future just to avoid the sacrifice love requires of them in the present. And they expect their children to respect them for that? Do they think we’re idiots just because we’re young?
— Darryl Steven Markowitz, The Sacrificial Wood
...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.
— Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation
His deepest need was that people should like him. An admirable trait that
—  in a spaniel. Or a whore.
The greatest threat to our Constitution is our own ignorance of it.
— Jacob F. Roecker
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and allelse, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses!
— Herbert Marcuse
...the Palestinian Arabs' obsession with the Jews and rejection of all political compromise was inspired by Islamic teachings as well as by European fascism.
— Sol Stern, A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred
...British appeasement of the Palestinian Arabs led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews [in the Holocaust] who might otherwise have found refuge in Palestine.
— Sol Stern, A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
— Edward Langley
Zionist willingness to compromise met by Palestinian rejection and Jew hatred.
— Sol Stern, A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred
A bright man of conviction and action is a beacon to his country,but a flash light to the scurrying of inaction, ego, and insecurity of lesser men.
— Daniel S. Green, The Perfect Pitch: The Biography of Roger Owens the Famous Peanut Man at Dodger Stadium
It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us."Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York after WWI
— Alfred E. Smith
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
— Douglas R. Casey
England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.
— George Orwell, Why I Write
It does no service to the cause of racial equality for white people to content themselves with judging themselves to be nonracist. Few people outside the clan or skinhead movements own up to all-out racism these days. White people must take the extra step. They must become anti-racist.
— Clarence Page
... had to pee like a racehorse at an Iced Tea convention.
— Stephen Colbert, I Am America
Since when did the American Dream become the American Guarantee?
— Michelle Malkin
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget that their is such a thing as war. If the government if inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Ladies and Gentlemen. I should like to inform you on behalf of the nation state of Guyana, that we are going to resign from being a country. We can't make it work. We have tried. We have done our best. It is not possible. The problems are insoluble. From midnight tonight, we shall cease trading. The country is now disbanded. We will voluntarily liquidate ourselves. The nation will disperse quietly, a little shamefaced but so what. We had a go.Different people have suggested different solutions. Do it this way. Try that. Let me have a go. Nothing works. We are at the mercy of the rich countries. A team of management consultants from the United States could not find the answer, and for not finding the answer, we had to pay them an amount that substantially increased our national debt. We give in, gracefully, but we give in."And then he imagined himself, quietly and with dignity, putting his papers in his briefcase, bowing to the hushed assembly, returning to clear out his office and going for a walk with his wife along the sea wall. (The Ventriloquist's Tale
— Pauline Melville
Italy has been made
—  now it remains to make Italians
There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.
— David K. Shipler, Rights of the People, The: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties
power the mojave desert with miles & miles of solar panels!
— Joy Leftow
The dictatorship is like an aria that never becomes an opera.
— Emilia Pardo Bazán
One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures, and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation.
— Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1944.
The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The AHC and the Arab states rejected any proposal to share the land and vowed to drown the fledging Jewish state in rivers of blood.
— Sol Stern, A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred
The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.
— David K. Shipler, Rights of the People, The: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties
Republican and Democrat are simply two different factions of the same ruling party, and their congressional battles are primarily over political spoils, not political ideology
— Vox Day
Do you thinking not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"--Robert Redford from the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor
— James Grady, Six Days of the Condor
The Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly said that America is not at war with Islam. And Republicans need to be vocal about condemning anyone, in America or abroad, who seeks to lump all Muslims together as America's enemies. America is not at war with Islam, and Republicans must continue to follow President Bush's example in condemning any expressions of prejudice against Muslims.
— Margaret Hoover, American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
How could he uphold the law when that law upheld injustice?
— Ian Bassingthwaighte, Live from Cairo
From the vantage of a mid-1970's consensus that regarded the United States as having entered a post-Protestant era, the rise of a Religious Right dominated not only by Protestants but by fundamentalists was not the way the story was supposed to go. People like Jerry Falwell looked like party crashers who, rather than slikinking from bar to buffet in hopes of going unnoticed, demanded that the vegetarian, alcohol-imbibing hosts serve meat and tell the bartender to go home.
— D.G. Hart, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism
The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence.  Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar
The time is always right to do the right thing.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body.
— George Orwell, 1984
And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.
— Jon Stewart, The Daily Show: An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests
For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask, why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx are raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners, or by upstart would be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen.
— Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
We and future generations should never forget them, Always remember them.
— Davan Yahya Khalil
I think the whole student rebellion is not really a rebellion at all....They want a certain kind of identity
—  they're jockeying with each other for political power in their own culture. The basis for this behavior is a desire for notoriety.
Without critical work, political awareness is likely to remain superficial and rhetorical.
— Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right
Use political positions as a platform to introduce legislation based on kingdom principle
— Sunday Adelaja
The president has kept all the promises he intended to keep.
— George  Stephanopoulos
All of us sit here at this conference and feel secure in our belief that we live in an era beyond this kind of…authoritarian regime change; but what sort of political climate do you think could potentially break apart our current stasis and deliver us back in time, so to speak?Thank you, I am gratified there has been so much interest in our little project. Gilead Studies languished for many years, I suppose those who had lived through those times did not want them resurrected for various reasons including what might have been done to them and what they themselves might have done. But at this distance, we can allow ourselves some perspective. It’s fortunate that is the last question as my voice is giving out. As to your question, in times of peace and plenty, it is hard to remember the conditions that have led to authoritarian regime changes in the past. And it is even harder to suppose that we ourselves would ever make such choices or allow them to be made. But when there is a perfect storm and collapse of the established order is in the works precipitated by environmental stresses that lead to food shortages, economic factors such as unrest due to unemployment, a social structure that is top heavy with too much wealth being concentrated among too few, then scapegoats are sought and blamed, fear is rampant, and there is pressure to trade what we think of as liberty for what we think of as safety. And, when the birth rate of any society is low enough to create an aging shrinking population, then commercial and military authorities will become alarmed. Their customer base and their recruitment base will be in jeopardy and there will be extreme pressure on women of childbearing age to make up the population deficit, thus our handmaid and her tale.
— Margret Atwood
One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.
— Franz Kafka
Even on the saddest nightin times of servitudethere is always someone who resiststhere is always someone who says no.
— Manuel Alegre
A convoluted mind believes a fallacy of covert assertion, that the gesture of goodwill toward the well-being of any group of people, should only be accepted from a specific race or party – this is ignorance of the highest order.
— Josephine Akhagbeme
Nation has to be proud of itself to move forward.It should be clear that as long as India does not stand-up, there will be no peace in Asia.
— Vikram Singh Slathia
Bernie Saunders is like a fly buzzing around a bowl of rotten fruit. Long hail this fly!
— Marge Simon
Well Hillary Clinton may mean well but she's satanic and plans to rule the world
— Shelby Sorenson
The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment...
— Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
but as long as he keeps the bad people rich and the good people scared no one will touch him
— Christopher J. Nolan, Batman Begins
It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments
— Seán MacStíofáin
We’re wasting our time trying to deal with Baghdad, It’s better to call for independence today.
— Davan Yahya Khalil
Balochistan was refused legitimacy for its nationhood with the creation of Pakistan due to the geographical location and the rich natural resources. The story would have been completely different if this has been a barren land.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
While keeping an open mind, beware, politicians will gladly fill it with garbage.
— Ron Akers
Trump is a counter-product of the traditional political scheme.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The mentality of being the super power globally or regionally has contributed strongly to the development of very negative aspects to the political cohabitation the countries of the region than proving the capability of producing solutions that would meet the needs of the public.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Many years of Independence turning out to be years many citizens want to gain Independence from
— Mwirigi LG
Before the constitution can protect the people it must first protect the person.
— T. Rafael Cimino, A Battle of Angels
Carol says we speak with one voice. What she doesn't say is that voice belongs to HER. There's only one song to sing these days--Carol's song--and if you aren't in harmony, you can stick a stone in your mouth and shut the hell up.
— Joe Hill, The Fireman
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
— C. K. Chesterton
Very few of the common people realize that the political and legal systems have been corrupted by decades of corporate lobbying.
— Steven Magee
[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.
— George Oppen
My hope is that, factual or fabricated, every line in Tsarina leads to a single truth: that when you forget that those you disagree with are people, not just your faceless opposition, you don't end up proving who is right and who is wrong. You end up with a body count.
— J. Nelle Patrick, Tsarina
The main thing is to make history, not to write it
— Otto von Bismarck
Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that.
— Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.
— Tony Benn
I was about as political as a bath towel.
— Michel Houellebecq, Soumission
After a while, she murmurs, "What does it mean... what is it to be American?" The question stuns him. That he doesn't know how to answer stuns him more. Or maybe he doesn't know the answer. Maybe certainty is impossible. We're only as real as what we do and what is done to us in the moment; knowing comes much later, if it comes at all. We're jostled by too many acts that we choose to forget.
— Merlinda Bobis, The Solemn Lantern Maker: A Novel
Where this lack of passion mattered most for me was Afghanistan. When soldiers put their lives on the line, they need to know that the command in chief who sent them in harm's way believes in their mission. They need him to talk often to them and to the country, not just to express gratitude for their service and sacrifice but also to explain and affirm why that sacrifice is necessary, why their fight is noble, why their cause is just, and why their fight is noble, why their cause is just, and why they must prevail. President Obama never did that. Pg. 298-299
— Robert M. Gates
I always thought Obama was "presidential." He treated the office of the presidency with respect. I rarely saw him in the Oval Office with a coat and tie, and he always conducted himself with dignity. He was a man of personal integrity, and in his personal behavior - at least to the extent I could observe it - he was an excellent role model...I thought Obama was first-rate in both intellect and temperament." Page 300
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
What a ruler has to rely upon is only the human heart. Human hearts are to the ruler what roots are to a tree, what oil is to a lamp, water to fish, fields to a farmer, or money to a merchant.
— Su Shi
Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.
— Tony Benn
The best way to expose our ignorance is to hold on to biased ideas and opinions, because we fear giving the upper hand to the other side.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
Actions & statements made on the basis of critical analysis & discernmentare not the same as divisiveness. Know the difference.
— Tur-Ha Ak
As Obama would tell me one occasion, "I can't defend it unless I understand it." I rarely saw him rush to a decision when circumstances allowed him time to gather information, analyze, and reflect...When the occasion demand it, though, Obama could make a big decision - a life-and-death decision - very fast." Page 299
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
But *why* do clean torture and democracy appear to go hand in hand? This is an important puzzle (though by no means the only one suggested by the data). My explanation for this pattern generally is this: Public monitoring leads institutions that favor painful coercion to use and combine clean torture techniques to evade detection, and, to the extent that public monitoring is not only greater in democracies, but that public monitoring of human rights is a core value in modern democracies, it is the case that where we find democracies torturing today we will also be more likely to find stealthy torture.
— Darius M. Rejali, Torture and Democracy
Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
Whatever actually happened or was said, McChystal's refusal to defend himself - to give me any ammunition to use on his behalf - made it impossible for me to save his job. But to this day, I believe he was given the bum's rush by Biden, White House staff, and NSS who harbored deep resentment toward his unyielding advocacy the previous fall of counterinsurgency and a huge troop surge in Afghanistan; who interpreted his public comments back than as "boxing in" the president; and who continued to oppose the strategy approved by the president and the way McChrystal was implementing it. I am convinced the "Rolling Stone" article gave the president, egged on by those around him in the White House, and himself distrustful of the senior military, and opportunity he welcomed to demonstrate vividly - to the public and to the Pentagon - that he was commander in chief and fully in control of the military.
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
..."the unpredictability of war - that once the first shots are fired or first bombs fall, as Churchill said, the political leader loses control. Events are in the saddle. It seems that every war is begun with the assumptions it will be short. In nearly every instance, going back far into history, that assumption has been wrong. And so it happened again in Iraq and Afghanistan, as swift and successful regime changes gave way to long and bloody conflicts. In light of history, how could anyone have been surprised that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took unanticipated turns?
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
I concluded by saying that the SEALs in that room truly gave meaning to George Orwell's observation that "people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." page 546
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
Politicians look for interests not people
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
A politician will promise the moon but deliver an ant hill
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?
— John Carlos, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World
Mix carefully truth and deceit, you have politics
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
After these readings I confirmed my suspicions and feelings on that day outside Ennis courthouse that not only was Eamonn De Valera complicit in the assassination of Michael Collins, but he was also responsible for ensuring that the partition of Ireland stayed in place and that Ireland was always secretly under the control of British political interest.
— A. Antares
In theory man is put at the center of everything but in practice he is barely allowed to sit on the sidelines
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
We fight exploitation of man by man in words but live it in daily life
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
...citizens of the U.S. live under an Empire of “evil doers” who have set themselves juxtaposed to humanity instilling in us from our youngest days how to slay our human element in exchange for an external existence of malnourished pride.
— Steven Storm
Do you prefer to be with people who glow with love and compassion or those who burn with anger fueled by religious doctrine or political ideology?
— Jeff Rasley
Live as if you were a country and other people as other nations. Then learn politics
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Politics preys on people's naivety
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Politicians are a breed of the human race who believe they know everything
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Not because of you. You were perfect. Are perfect. You’re considerate, moral, brave. But you reminded me…”He couldn’t finish.I swallowed through a dry throat. “Of her.”“No.” He blinked. “Of me. Who I used to be. Somebody who would stick up for his friends, even if it was risky. Somebody who put other people first. Somebody who…” He let out a helpless laugh. “Somebody who screwed up a lot.
— Jenn Marie Thorne, The Wrong Side of Right
The opposite of liberal is stingy. The opposite of radical is superficial. The opposite of conservative is destructive. So I declare that I am a radical conservative liberal. Beware of men who use words to mean their opposites.
— R.A. Lafferty
It’s funny, because we all read history and we think, ‘Oh, I would … have risen up, I would have fought, I would have been an abolitionist,' And I tell them, ‘No, you wouldn’t have. If you would have, you’d be doing that right now. You know trafficking exists, you’ve heard of it, but you don’t want to look.
— Tim Ballard (Operation Underground Railroad)
If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.
— Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom
Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?
— Barry López, Arctic Dreams
some smart alecs of those days after World War I used to say: "The French fought for liberty, the British fought to control the seas, but the Americans fought for souvenirs.
— Harry Truman, Mr. Citizen
Democracy and tyranny are not distant relatives. They’re bedfellows.”-General John JamesCommandant, USMCDecember 11th, 2032
— L. Douglas Hogan
When the Russian delegate this summer indicated the Soviet Union's interest in sending medical equipment, Dr Shigeto went right away to see the delegate and settle the matter tactfully. He is careful to steer clear of the superficial swirl of political maneuvering, but never misses any opportunity to improve the capability of the A-bomb Hospital or to enhance concretely the welfare of the patients. In that sense, he sometimes refers to himself as a 'dirty handkerchief.' That is, he serves to filter political purposes out of relief efforts so that the effect on patients is purely and concretely humane.
— Kenzaburō Ōe, Hiroshima Notes
A number of people who I’ve talked to about this assume that I got into a fight with the cops. (Because of, y'know, the militant politics.) I actually had an audience member come up to me once and ask me if I paid taxes. Of course I pay taxes! I pay taxes for exactly the same reason that I hate paying taxes — because I think my government is terrifying and stupid. I don't need the IRS kicking my door down and taking my meticulously alphabetized collection of Tijuana bibles.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
She leaned into me, and I could feel her hot breath against my ear. 'I want you to eat me,' she whispered. 'I want you to eat me like you’re an angry Alaskan grizzly and I’m Timothy Treadwell.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
She lifted me back into the seat with a wicked grin, and breathed, 'Just don’t stop talking. Whatever you do, just don’t stop talking,' and swallowed my manhood. I scrambled desperately through the darkened corners of my memory until I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed her by the hair and said, 'Now bend over, and I’ll do to you what the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wants to keep the Federal government from doing to the state of Alaska.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
So, I’m a playwright. In Minneapolis. Which means that I find myself operating in a pretty lefty crowd, most of the time. And most of my energy goes towards arguing with that, and musing about how I really fucking can’t stand Democrats. So I was startled to be reminded of a fact that I’d almost entirely forgotten: I really fucking can’t stand Republicans.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
So a while back I spent a night in jail. Now, as for exactly what landed me there, I’d be so delighted to never have to go into any of the details regarding that. Besides, other people’s theories are so much more exotic and exciting than the reality. I've heard everything from 'attempted terrorism' to 'indecent public condescension.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage