c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Trust remains the coin of the realm in politics. A President who is trusted, by the people, by the congress, by the press, by foreign countries, is a President who can get a lot of good things done.
— David Gergen
Thane had never been one of the idealists
—  he'd accepted Wedge Antilles's invitation not because he believed the Rebellion was pure good but because he'd learned the Empire was pure evil.
I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
Every animal is biologically designed by Nature to do wrong in return. It takes a human being to not do wrong in return.
— Abhijit Naskar
The majority of men have no opinions, and these have to be pumped into them from outside, like lubricants into machinery. Hence it is necessary that some mind or other should hold and exercise authority, so that the people without opinions- the majority- can start having opinions. For without these, the common life of humanity would be chaos, a historic void, lacking in any organic structure. Consequently, without a spiritual power, without someone to command, and in proportion as this is lacking, chaos reigns over mankind.
— Ortega y Gasset
The psychological fact of suggestion is that if statements are made again and again in a confident manner, without argument or proof, then their hearers will tend to believe them quite independently of their soundness and of the presence or absence of evidence for their truth.
— Robert H. Thouless, التفكير المستقيم والتفكير الأعوج
The problem of political theory is how to combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress, with the degree of social cohesion which is necessary for survival.
— Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Russell's Best
A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population has inevitably rendered it necessary. However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose- which, naturally, will be that which suits them best.
— Ortega y Gasset
From that day on I clearly understood that the kingdom of God can never mix with politics. The ultimate, stated aim of Marxist teaching is the complete eradication of all religion. The pure bride of Christ can never be controlled by an atheistic government or led by men who hate God!
— Brother Yun, The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun
The Earth orbits round tables.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Reiterating other people's hopes, dreams and fears. That's what politics is all about.
— Antonio G. Kowatsch
Hitler was calling upon Almighty God to give him courage and strength to save the German people and right the wrongs of Versailles...and then to settle down and govern the county in the interest of those millions of oppressed "little people" for whom he spoke so eloquently.
— Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth I
¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨
— Robert J. Sawyer, Quantum Night
The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master. With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat. There was more leisure too, inexperienced though the animals were.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
There is a large gap between being an activist out of the idealism that comes from books, conversations, the fire of youth and being one because you have lived through the depredations that life has thrown at you.
— Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others
Only those who live for others become immortal, and the rest simply perish within a few weeks , or alas days, after their mortal demise.
— Abhijit Naskar
Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy.
— Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians
I do know a few things, actually. I know you have rather backwards laws about relations with non-magic people. That you're not mean to befriend them, that you can't marry them, which seems mildly absurd to me.
— J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay
Years ago, a member of Congress slipped a laminated quote into my hand that he must have thought I would find meaningful. I paid little attention at first and unfortunately I don’t recall just who gave me the quote. I placed it next to my voting card and have carried it ever since. The quote came from Elie Wiesel’s book One Generation After. The quote was entitled “Why I Protest.”Author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the one righteous man of Sodom, who walked the streets protesting against the injustice of this city. People made fun of him, derided him. Finally, a young person asked: “Why do you continue your protest against evil; can’t you see no one is paying attention to you?” He answered, “I’ll tell you why I continue. In the beginning, I thought I would change people. Today, I know I cannot. Yet, if I continue my protest, at least I will prevent others from changing me.”	I’m not that pessimistic that we can’t change people’s beliefs or that people will not respond to the message of liberty and peace. But we must always be on guard not to let others change us once we gain the confidence that we are on the right track in the search for truth.
— Ron Paul, Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom
Any person who considers himself, and intends to remain, a member of Western society inherits the Western past from Athens and Jerusalem to Runnymede and Valley Forge, as well as to Watts and Chicago of August 1968. He may ignore it or deny it, but that does not alter the fact. The past sits back and smiles and knows it owns him anyway.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History:  Selected Essays
I am in a state about all of this. I comb the newspapers. I listen to the commentators. And I get into fights all over the place. If a Republican knows his place and hates McCarthy and wishes to God Eisenhower would get more aggressive about these bastards, well and good and I will admit him to the brotherhood. If he says nasty things about Truman (who is rapidly becoming the Man I Love although I have been sore enough at him in my time) or still thinks taxes are coming down and we can get out of Korea‡ and we ought to fire all the Democrats in Washington and don’t worry, McCarthy-ism will blow over or alternately Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire—well, dear, I am no lady and I argue loudly and lose my temper and it’s disgraceful.
— Joan Reardon, As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece
The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.
— Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Identity politics is killings free speech on campus, silencing Muslim women struggle, boosting both Islamism and the far Right and pushing reconciled Muslim voices to the fringes. It makes implicit assumptions about Islam - from an Islamist, Left or Right- perspective - and insists all Muslims must adhere to that definition or be regarded not truly Muslim. It ignores the fact that most ordinary Muslims are not in favour of a violent and that in surveys and polls they support British values more than the general UK population. Yet the myth persists that the ideology of Islamism is the true expression of what it means to be Muslim.
— Tony McMahon, Sara Khan
Power is the ability to direct or privent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals.
— Moisés Naím, The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be
Nineteenth-century liberalism had assumed that man was a rational being who operated naturally according to his own best interests, so that in the end, what was reasonable would prevail. On this principle liberals defended extension of the suffrage toward the goal of one man, one vote. But a rise in literacy and in the right to vote, as the event proved, did nothing to increase common sense in politics. The mob that is moved by waving the bloody shirt, that decides elections in response to slogans—Free Silver, Hang the Kaiser, Two Cars in Every Garage—is not exhibiting any greater political sense than Marie Antoinette, who said, “Let them eat cake,” or Caligula, who made his horse a consul. The common man proved no wiser than the decadent aristocrat. He has not shown in public affairs the innate wisdom which democracy presumed he possessed.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History:  Selected Essays
That unique Moscow mix of tackiness and menace. One time I see a poster advertising a new property development that captures the tone nicely. Got up in the style of Nazi propaganda, it shows two Germanic-looking youths against a glorious alpine mountain over the slogan "Life is Getting Better". It would be wrong to say the ad is humorous, but it's not quite serious either. It's sort of both. It's saying this is the society we live in (a dictatorship), but we're just playing at it (we can make jokes about it), but playing in a serious way (we're making money playing it and won't let anyone subvert its rules).
— Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
When the truth reaches the mass, it becomes impossible to govern by deception.
— Mike Ducheine, The Obama Legacy
Sports, Politics and Technology. All the same game.
— George Shirk, Ookpik
But I was brought up on convent morals and paternal nationalism, I was getting bogged down in contradictions.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.
— Lionel Shriver
Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.
— Gore Vidal, The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000
Both Obama and Romney ended up in the wrong place: the former thought American exceptionalism was no longer true and should be given up while the latter thought it was still true. Neither was willing to tell Americans that they were no longer exceptional but should try to be again.
— George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
Power does not corrupt
—  it merely elevates the degree in which something is done that has already been pursued.
Men have special needs too: for example, a man generally needs a higher daily intake of calories than a woman. But this has never been though of as a sign of men's inferiority to women; if anything, it is a sign of strength and an entitlement to extra food.
— Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy
... You can only properly oppress people through a stability bordering on stagnation.
— Brian Clevinger, 8-Bit Theater
We have had enough of the old men and the money-counters!" And people further off took up the cry: "Up Bowman, and down with the moneybags,
— J.R.R. Tolkien
An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state for the acquisition of wealth.No. 75
— Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.
— Max Weber, Essays in Economic Sociology
Power is like a house of cards. Leave it alone and it will stand forever. But if you try to build it higher and higher, sooner or later it is bound to collapse.
— Felix O. Hartmann, Dark Age
I'm just a common sense person, i don't judge others, i feel we all may have to face at an unknown time and i also think that with great power comes great responsibility. i just say a short prayer for those in office, and will continue to as long as i may: God the whole universe is subject to you, we live in a political reality that can seem far removed from your kingdom. bless those who lead my country. correct their errors and strengthen every good impulse.
— Dembe Michael
A leader is not born to become leader without living like lion ,if you think a leader is not doing well ,then work hard ,invest your time and your efforts to secure it one day so that you can do better than your present leader. Togetherness we stand
— Dembe Michael
Why is it that all individuals today, at least all who are socially conscious, are in one way or another tortured by social guilt? Because whatever they do is fatally false, falsified by the pressure of an utterly false society. If you live solely for individual contacts and personal service, then you betray your obligation to the suffering millions with whom you have no contact. If you live for economic or social and political action to cure the sick world, then, either you will be entirely ineffective, or else you will gain power, and so be corrupted by power; and then you will contribute to the burden of the institutionalism and mechanized tyranny that is turning all men into robots. If you withdraw from the world to purge your soul of the world’s poison, seeking a lone salvation in religious discipline and contemplation, then again you betray your immediate obligation to your fellows, even if you innocently suppose you will discover truth invaluable to a future generation. No! As I see it, do what you will, you are damned, just because you are all of a piece with a damned world, a damned species.
— Olaf Stapledon, A Man Divided
Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.
— Noam Chomsky
What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?
— Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies,' people at last prefer tyranny to chaos. Equality of power is an unstable condition; men are by nature unequal; and 'he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.' Democracy has still to solve the problem of enlisting the best energies of men while giving to all alike the choice of those, among the trained and fit, by whom they wish to be ruled.
— Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
— Jeremy Bentham, The Works Of Jeremy Bentham: Published Under The Superintendence Of His Executor, John Bowring. Volume 1
The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors.' He mentions Seneca, Antonius Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own.
— Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
The 2016 cyberattack was not just another case of simple Kompromat - meddling in the political affairs of a satellite nation or an individual dissenter. It was a direct attempt to hijack and derail the traditional processes and norms that held the United States together for more than 240 years. The attempt was even more brazen due to the apparent belief that Putin assumed that he and his oligarchy could charm, groom and select a candidate, then with the right amount of cybercrime and enough organized propaganda they could actually choose a president of the United States to do their bidding.
— Malcolm Nance, The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election
…95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it’s supposed to be about. Meaning it’s become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil […] Political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened…. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying… How can any of this possibly help me, the average citizen, deliberate about whom to choose to decide my country’s macroeconomic policy, or how even to conceive for myself what that policy’s outlines should be, or how to minimize the chances of North Korea nuking the DMZ and pulling us into a ghastly foreign war, or how to balance domestic security concerns with civil liberties? Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an asshole—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community.
— David Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace: The Interview
Good intentions are ubiquitous in politics
—  what is scarce is accurate beliefs.
The more doubtful the political outlook the fiercer will be the dogmas which men create and contend for.
— John Buchan, The Marquis of Montrose
....the increasingly common ideology that assures people they’re right about what they believe.... is, however, socially detrimental . It hijacks conversation and aborts ideas. It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It makes the experience of living in a society slightly worse than it should be.
— Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
I have come to call this shadow government the Deep State...a hybrid association of key elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States with only limited reference to the consent of the governed as normally expressed through elections
— Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
It is only by ignoring fact, science, and reason that one can support current Republican positions.
— Avi Silverman, Phalluses of Logic: How to Know When Republicans Lie
Political problems ruin meals. Let it be known as Eric’s Law of Lunch henceforth.
— Garon Whited
We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into life.-Martin Luther King Jr.
— Maya Angelou
Becoming a part of a movement doesn't help anybody think clearly.
— Sam Harris
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
Rayner can't go into politics, she's got more shit on her than Elton John's cock!
— Garth Ennis, The Boys, Volume 9: The Big Ride
Power is given to those who reach to take it & claimed by those who will stop at nothing to fulfill what they believe is their birthright.
— Saminu Kanti
Without a Uniform Civil Code, labelling India be Secular nation is just a illusion.Uniform Civil Code is necessary for India so that t same laws r valid for every citizen without taking religion into consideration.
— Vikram Singh Slathia
What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals.
— Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
There are great virtues in a conservative attitude towards structural features of government. The sudden abandonment of institutions is an act that reverberates in ways no one can predict and many come to regret.
— Alexander Bickel
If not us, then who? Who's going to stand when everyone else kneels? Who's going to argue for the law even when there's no justice to be had? Who's going to try even when the trying is too damn hard?
— Sebastien de Castell
I do not believe that human lives may be made the means for satisfying an artist's desire for self-expression. We must demand, rather, that every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to model his life himself, as far as this does not interfere too much with others. Much as I may sympathize with the aesthetic impulse, I suggest that the artist might seek expression in another material. Politics, I demand, must uphold equalitarian and individualistic principles; dreams of beauty have to submit to the necessity of helping men in distress, and men who suffer injustice; and to the necessity of constructing institutions to serve such purposes.
— Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
It is not necessary to remind you of the fact that your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. All of these things you know.
— Edward R. Murrow
In every area of politics, the goal is control.
— R. A. Delmonico
It is not only the unit vote for the Presidency we are talking about, but a whole solar system of governmental power. If it is proposed to change the balance of power of one of the elements of the solar system, it is necessary to consider the others.
— John F. Kennedy
A full loyalty to the leader merely fits to the dogs, not to the humans!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.
— Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later, sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal, and change comes upon us like a change of weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.
— Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
At the federal level, this problem could be greatly alleviated by abolishing the Electoral College system. It's the winner-take-all mathematics from state to state that delivers so much power to a relative handful of voters. It's as if in politics, as in economics, we have a privileged 1 percent. And the money from the financial 1 percent underwrites the microtargeting to secure the votes of the political 1 percent. Without the Electoral College, by contrast, every vote would be worth exactly the same. That would be a step toward democracy.
— Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Democracy's fatal flaw: There are more dumb people than smart people. Welcome to the new Dark Ages!
— Oliver Gaspirtz
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
— Donald J. Trump
Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound philosophy of capital, what we really need is a profound psychology and philosophy of resentment. We must learn to live for ourselves, without reference to the other, and, at the same time, to rise above and beyond ourselves. Or else history will keep repeating itself, and our life will be a living death.
— Neel Burton
It is not enough for a population or a section of the population to have Christian faith and be docile to the ministers of religion in order to be in a position properly to judge political matters. If this population has no political experience, no taste for seeing clearly for itself nor a tradition of initiative and critical judgment, its position with respect to politics grows more complicated, for nothing is easier for political counterfeiters than to exploit good principles for purposes of deception, and nothing is more disastrous than good principles badly applied. And moreover nothing is easier for human weakness than to merge religion with prejudices of race, family or class, collective hatreds, passions of a clan and political phantoms which compensate for the rigors of individual discipline in a pious but insufficiently purified soul. Politics deal with matters and interests of the world and they depend upon passions natural to man and upon reason. But the point I wish to make here is that without goodness, love and charity, all that is best in us—even divine faith, but passions and reason much more so—turns in our hands to an unhappy use. The point is that right political experience cannot develop in people unless passions and reason are oriented by a solid basis of collective virtues, by faith and honor and thirst for justice. The point is that, without the evangelical instinct and the spiritual potential of a living Christianity, political judgment and political experience are ill protected against the illusions of selfishness and fear; without courage, compassion for mankind and the spirit of sacrifice, the ever-thwarted advance toward an historical ideal of generosity and fraternity is not conceivable.
— Jacques Maritain, Christianity And Democracy
This American government—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
There are hundreds of intelligent and big brains in every country in the world to run that country successfully but somehow and often either an immoral stupid or a charlatan imbecile comes to power!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
You can't spend months insulting almost every group imaginable and then expect everyone to suddenly sing kumbaya together.
— Kevin James Shay
The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.
— Noam Chomsky, 9-11
Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind.
— Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
It will be said that, although God’s law is inscribed in our hearts, Scripture is nevertheless the Word of God, and it is no more permissible to say of Scripture that it is mutilated and contaminated than to say this of God’s Word. In reply, I have to say that such objectors are carrying their piety too far, and are turning religion into superstition; indeed, instead of God’s Word they are beginning to worship likenesses and images, that is, paper and ink.
— Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.
— Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
He taught me early in life to take people one at a time, based on their individual qualities and never as a member of a group. That led, he said, to hatred and bias; that was what the Nazis had done.
— Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
Just because there is change around us does not mean there has to be change within us.
— Toni Sorenson
Our country is failing to live up to its promise of opportunity and fairness. It used to be true that if you went to college and you worked hard, you could count on having a decent middle-class life - but that's just not true anymore. Economic and political changes that have occurred over the past three decades have made the middle-class American dream for today's twenty- and thirtysomethings far less possible than it was for their parents' generation. It's not that we're lazy, that we have no work ethic, or that we have outrageous spending habits. It's that we've been screwed.
— Camille Perri, The Assistants
... The form of leadership must be the focus of constant reappraisal. Weber states, for example: 'Each new fact may necessitate the re-adjustment of the relations between end and indispensable means, between desired goals and unavoidable subsidiary consequences.' This process of re-adjustment is ultimately without resolution, for the political and ethical value-spheres are not only in constant opposition but also in permanent flux. It is the task of the politician to negotiate this value conflict and to be decisive as to the value to be pursued and the means to be employed.
— Nicholas Gane, Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization Versus Re-enchantment
The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It's the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pass the buck on down the line, they will.
— Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem
Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.
— Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
The vital aspect of the electoral college was that it got the Convention over the hurdle and protected everybody's interest. The future was left to cope with the problem of what to do with this Rube Goldberg mechanism... The Electoral College was neither an exercise in applied Platonism nor an experiment in indirect government based on elitist distrust of the masses. It was merely a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content.
— John Roche
... In view of the violence of political power responsibility must always prevail. The only possible synthesis between conviction and responsibility is thus one in which passion is subordinated to responsibility, so that political responsibility is the primary value to be pursued with passion, thereby engendering what H. H. Bruun terms a 'responsible ethic of conviction.' Weber states: 'To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a "cause" also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action.
— Nicholas Gane, Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization Versus Re-enchantment
Guns neither initiated nor enabled larger changes. Economic, political, and social development preceded and laid the foundation for the invention and use of the gun, not the other way around.
— Peter A. Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb
... The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuing political values with conviction.
— Nicholas Gane, Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization Versus Re-enchantment
The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.
— Vladimir Lenin
The roots of shame run deep.
— Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
Unfortunately in today’s world a liar seems to be more reliable than a truthful honest man.
— Munia Khan
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.
— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
When everything is a law, nothing is a law.
— Eric Robert Morse
At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy.
— Dave Barry, I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood
Democracy could be worthless and counterproductive in the absence of sound moral leadership!
— Lennox Lampkin
Politics is like a branches on a tree, they all grow in different directions but their roots remain as one.
— Saminu Kanti
Stop blaming racism, politics, bullies, your crappy parents, your ex-wife, your lack of friends or anything else for your problems. Sometimes, I think our “problems” are really just opportunities to test our metal. We look at them as holes that we fall into, when really, they are the CHANCE to prove to ourselves and those around us just what kind of men we are!
— Josh Hatcher, Manlihood: The 12 Pillars of Masculinity
To the contemporary feminist, sexual differences mean inequality, inequality means injustice, and injustice must be stamped out at all costs. And so, they have set about stamping out sexual differences at all costs.
— Eric Robert Morse, The Economic Theory of Sex: Industrialism, Feminism, and the Disintegration of the Family
All of the administrative methods used in professional circles- confidentiality, whatever else is in vogue- are just tools. Tools that governing bodies can deploy, under the guise of fairness. Some of the most corrupt organisations I have worked with have the most finely developed guidelines that they work to. These guidelines gives them more rope to hang their victims.
— Guy Mankowski, An Honest Deceit
Rather than street crime, I argue that a better analogy is to voting. Having a high opportunity cost of time—resulting, say, from a high-paying job and a good education—should discourage people from voting, yet it is precisely those with a high opportunity cost of time who tend to vote. Why? Because they care about influencing the outcome and consider themselves sufficiently well informed to want to express their opinions. Terrorists also care about influencing political outcomes. Instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, to understand what makes a terrorist we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose their extremist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead they are people who care so deeply and fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it.
— Alan B. Krueger
It's not all about building police forces and more prisons. This is in a sense an abdication of what the rule of law is and in the same way that simply running to electoral processes has nothing to do with the true building of democracies. There's allot more to democracies then elections and there's allot more to the rule of law then law enforcement.
— George Stamatis
Engineering is the continuation of politics by other means
— Larrie D. Ferreiro
When they brought in communism it was for the people, so they killed the people. Now they've brought in capitalism, which is for the rich, so they only kill the rich. This time you and I have nothing to worry about.
— Rana Dasgupta, Solo
Most countries have only few honest politicians and this is just like having a body with only few good organs functioning!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
...civility doesn't require consensus or the suspension of criticism. It is simply the ability to disagree productively with others while respecting their sincerity and decency.
— Ravi Iyer and Jonathan Haidt
In researching this book, I quickly discovered a surprising thing about the 1960s: the decade was not nearly as radical as we've been led to believe. In fact, the upheaval was really confined to a very narrow stratum of society. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the 1960s was a conservative decade.
— Jonathan Leaf, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties
War happens when people are too stubborn or scared to listen to the other party and coming up with compromises, and when that happens, they decide that we must send out people to die, if they want a war, they should not send men and woman who have no desire to fight, and have no real reason, if they want to fight the people running the show should do it themselves, they are basically murdering a lot of good people through their own cowardice.
— Satuin Segi
Everyone is familiar with the slogan "The personal is political" -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression.
— Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
To know the good from the bad, study a man or woman's history of actions, not their record of intentions.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Was there anyone in this world who could taste something delicious-economic freedom and political reform-a taste that was salty and fattening and sweet and promising, and only be satisfied with one mouthful? Who would wait patiently for nearly a billion people to also have a taste? No, anyone would try to get a second mouthful, a third, a whole bowl for themselves.
— Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
The Corrupt Officer has a Price and the Honest Officer has Integrity
— Gary York, Corruption Behind Bars: Stories of Crime and Corruption In Our American Prison System
The 2016 USA presidential election race clarified how an evil Nazi dictator like Adolf Hitler was able to come to power in global politics.
— Steven Magee
We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what’s not quite right is quite wrong.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
...Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way....
— David  Brooks
When father uses the word 'politics' he's talkingabout relations between nations. When I use the word, though, I'mtalking about the various subtle ways a woman can get men to dowhat she wants them to do.
— David Eddings, Polgara the Sorceress
The sacrifice ‘of’ self for the greater good is the greatest calling imaginable, and it is the bedrock of the greatest nations. The sacrifice ‘for’ self is the most pathetic calling imaginable, and it is the quicksand within which nations perish.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development
— Albert Einstein
In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.
— Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047
The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange