c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by theirbuying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, ofwhat quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners whofail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yetsatisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit theirpreferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busyfructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production ofever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientifictheories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is,the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims andfancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is massproduction to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makesenterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy.He is the customer “who is always right.
— Ludwig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism
Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.
— Kollontai Alexandra, La Oposición Obrera
I am an anarch in space, a metahistorian in time. Hence I am committed to neither the political present nor tradition; I am blank and also open and potent in any direction. Dear old Dad, in contrast, still pours his wine into the same decaying old wineskins, he still believes in a constitution when nothing and no one constitutes anything.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and simply think 'first woman president.' We think—for example—'first ex-co-president' or 'first wife of a disbarred lawyer and impeached former incumbent' or 'first person to use her daughter as photo-op protection during her husband's perjury rap.
— Christopher Hitchens
You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.
— Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
— Robert Jackson
One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred 'experience' on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main 'experience' involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency.
— Christopher Hitchens
The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison.
— Christopher Hitchens
The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing soundeconomic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit ofthis task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatanswhose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able toadvance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do theyinsult them.
— Ludwig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism
This brings us to the crux moment in the supposed 'Show Trial' melodrama. Employing the confusing and confused testimony of Jude Wanniski (who he also describes as a political nut-case, if not a nut-case flat-out, and to whom he introduced me in the first place) Blumenthal suggests that I concerted my testimony in advance with the House Republicans, notably James Rogan and Lindsey Graham. Feebly bridging the gap between sheer conjecture and outright conspiracy, Rogan is quoted as saying: 'Hitchens may well have called Lindsey..' I did not in fact do any such thing. Why should my denial be believed? It's not as if I care. I probably should have colluded with them, if my intention was to land a blow on Clinton (which it was) let alone to plant a Judas kiss on Blumenthal (which it was not). But every other fragment of Blumenthal's evidence and description shows—even boasts—that Congressman Graham was essentially punching air until the last day of the trial. That could not possibly have been true, especially in his cross-examination of Blumenthal, if he knew he had an ace in his vest-pocket all along. Only a tendency to paranoia or to all-explaining theories could suggest the contrary. I'd even be able to claim for myself, I hope, that if I'd truly wanted to gouge a deep or vengeful wound I could or would have made a better job of it.
— Christopher Hitchens
It is undoubtedly true that religion is often socially conservative. By binding a people together under a shared God, a common cosmology and a common morality, religion creates order and stability and its rituals create social cohesio...n. By promising to the pious poor rewards in the next life, it reconciles them to their fate in this one and thus discourages them from rebelling against their condition...[also] religion [is] an inspiration to radicalism and rebellion. religion is a potential threat to any political or social order because it claims an authority higher than any available in this world. pp. 10-11
— Steve Bruce, Politics and Religion
Here was a temporary solution. Parole would get Mofokeng and Mokoena out of jail as quickly as possible. Other details could be sorted out later. I accompanied Nyambi to Kroonstad jail at the end of October and remember that as he told Mofokeng and Mokoena the news—that they would be home for Christmas—smiles slowly but surely transformed the sombre, cautious expressions on their faces.Big problem: it was discovered in December, a full two months after the judgment was made, that the court order does not mention the NCCS at all. Consequently, the NCCS interpreted the court's order as having removed the NCCS's jurisdiction to deal with any "lifers" sentenced pre-1994. The members of the NCCS packed their briefcases and went home.No one knows why the judgment didn't mention the NCCS; maybe the judge who wrote it, Justice Bess Nkabinde, simply didn't know how the parole system operates; but eight of her fellow judges, the best in the land, found with her.The Mofokeng and Mokoena families, who are from 'the poorest of the poor', as the ANC likes to say, are distraught.But the rest—the law men, the politicians and the government ministers—well, quite frankly, they don't seem to give a fig. Zuma has gone on holiday, to host his famous annual Christmas party for children. Mapisa-Nqakula has also gone on holiday. Mofokeng and Mokoena remain where they were put 17 years ago, despite not having committed any crime.
— Jeremy Gordin
Reform as such is inherently reactionary and perpetuates psychological dependence onthe enemy,while confusingthe true class contradictionsbetween ourselves and the enemy.
— Black Liberation Army Co-Ordinating Committee, Message To The Black Movement: A Political Statement From The Black Underground
When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
— John W. Gardner
This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.
— Mark Gevisser
All concepts of politics, of whatever kind, are about conflict──how to contain it, or abolish it.
— Ralph Miliband, Marxism And Politics
Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily.He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.''My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ...'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.''Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.''Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.
— Charles Finch, The Fleet Street Murders
Existing political philosophies all developed before evolutionary game theory, so they do not take equilibrium selection into account. Socialism pretends that individuals are not selfish sexual competitors, so it ignores equilibria altogether. Conservatism pretends that there is only one possible equilibrium—a nostalgic version of the status quo—that society could play. Libertarianism ignores the possibility of equilibrium selection at the level of rational social discourse, and assumes that decentralized market dynamics will magically lead to equilibria that yield the highest aggregate social benefits. Far from being a scientific front for a particular set of political views, modern evolutionary psychology makes most standard views look simplistic and unimaginitive.
— Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. I have never had to take any of that back, whereas if you look up what most of my profession was then writing about the beefy, unscrupulous 'New Democrat,' you will be astonished at the quantity of sheer saccharine and drool. Anyway, I kept on about it even after most Republicans had consulted the opinion polls and decided it was a losing proposition, and if you look up the transcript of the eventual Senate trial of the president—only the second impeachment hearing in American history—you will see that the last order of business is a request (voted down) by the Senate majority leader to call Carol and me as witnesses. So I can dare to say that at least I saw it through.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
The typical capitalists are lovers of power rather than sensual indulgence, but they have the same tendency to crush and to take tribute that the cruder types of sensualism possess. The discipline of the capitalist is the same as that of the frugalist. He differs from the latter in that he has no regard for the objects through which productive power is acquired. HE does not hesitate to exploit natural resources, lands, dumb animals and even his fellowman. Capital to such a man is an abstract fund, made up of perishable elements which are quickly replaced… The frugalist…stands in marked contrast to the attitude of the capitalist. The frugalist takes a vital interest in his tools, in his land, and in the goods he produces. He has a definite attachment to each. He dislikes to see an old coat wear out, an old wagon break down, or an old horse go lame. He always thinks of concrete things, wants them and nothing else. He desires not land, but a given farm, not horses or cattle and machines, but particular breeds and implements; not shelter, but a home…. He rejects as unworthy what is below standard and despises as luxurious what is above or outside of it. Dominated by activities, he thinks of capital as a means to an end.
— Ellen Ruppel Shell, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public
— Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New
It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers.
— G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates?
— Brian M. Barry, Political Argument
There wasn't even enough meat to make proper fun of [....] I keep waiting for somebody else to come on TV, maybe a cabinet member, to read the real speech, the one that tells us ... I dunno ... stuff. Seriously, sorority girls have done the Walk of Shame home from frat parties feeling more satisfied.
— Stephen Green
The host took care to produce one or another of these whenever the current subjects seemed about used up, so that the conversation gathered new life and at the same time steered clear of political arguments, which are hindersome to both ingestion and digestion.
— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
— John Harrington
Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.
— Mark Gevisser
[P]olitics is always a Kampfplatz.
— Perry Anderson
Wolves regularly attacked their rivals in power, so the idea of killing to gain position was neither alien nor repulsive to her. The use of assassins she had filed as yet another of the curious tools - like swords and bows — that humans created to make up for their lack of personal armament. What she still had to puzzle through was the subtle strategies involved in killing those who were expected to inherit power rather than those who held the power itself.
— Jane Lindskold, Through Wolf's Eyes
When first asked if he would grant an interview with TIME, Greene responded by asking a question of his own: 'Does the candidate get paid?
— Michael Scherer
You know your vote doesn't count, but you go through the motions, because it's been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference.
— Marshall Karp, The Rabbit Factory
It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering - it is not for you to say how far the worst of all exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at the secret self which smolders in him, sometimes under the every-day respectability and tranquility of a man like me - sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am - but judge us not. In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice - the long luxury of your freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now. 
— Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America.
— George W. Bush
When they ask me to become president of the United States I'm going to say, "Except for Washington D.C.
— Len Deighton, Spy Hook
What these men represented was not 'The West' but what was for this century a relatively new kind of monied class in America, a group devoid of social responsibilities because their ties to any one place had been so attenuated.
— Joan Didion, Vintage Didion
Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hear a word about the rest
— Alfred de Vigny, Stello
America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth.
— Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
Let him then have powers commensurate with his utmost possible need, only let him be held strictly responsible for the exercise of them. Any other course would be injustice as well as bad policy
— Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea
Not one little fellow need fear that he will be forbidden to pluck his shining grape from the cluster of political Power, that fruit reputed to be so full of wealth and glory. Can’t every gang become a club? and every club an assembly? an assembly, a convention? a convention, a senate? and isn’t a senate meant to rule? And what senate ever ruled without a man to rule it? And what did it all require? – Daring! – Aha! Well said! – What! is that all it takes? – Yes, all! The ones who have arrived say so. – Then courage, numskulls, give tongue and run for it! – That’s how it’s done
— Alfred de Vigny, Stello
We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. 
— Robert Louis Stevenson
quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987:Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand.
— Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
1983:To my generation has now come the challenge. In the days to come we will be tested on whether we have the moral courage, the realism, the idealism, the tenacity, and the ability to sacrifice some of the current comfort to invest in the future... I believe that this generation will rise to the challenge... The experts believe that, like the Democratic Party itself, the less than forty-year-old voters are prepared to sell their souls for some security, real or illusory. They have misjudged us. Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts.
— Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
The conservatives could sneer about "social engineering" if they wanted, but I thought that most people believed as I did that government should embody our best hopes and lend a hand to people who were struggling.
— Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
Robert Bork, at opening of Judiciary hearings:How should a judge go about finding the law? The only legitimate way, in my opinion, is by attempting to discern what those who made the law intended...As I wrote in an opinion for our court, the judge's responsibility "is to discern how the framers' values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply in the world we know.If a judge abandons intentions as his guide, there is no law available to him, and he begins to legislate a social agenda for the American people. That goes well beyond his powers..
— Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
In 1980 candidate Reagan asked whether we were better off than we had been 4 years earlier. In 1992 we will be asked whether we expect our children to live better than we do.
— Frank Levy
...Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic).
— Mark Ellingsen, When Did Jesus Become Republican?: Rescuing Our Country and Our Values from the Right-- Strategies for a Post-Bush America
Under Capitalism the most important thing is to squeeze out more and more money for a few people to spend. This means that most of the other people -- as well as the earth and the sea and all the creatures and plants and goggas -- have to pay the price.
— Sally Andrew, The Fire Dogs of Climate Change: An Inspirational Call to Action
Political success in Athens seemed to depend on having a party, and there seemed now to be no party with whom an honorable man could connect himself. 
— Irwin Edman
During my tenure at the Endowment, I often found that those who did us the most damage did so under the justification of helping us by 'preventing worse language.' In the military it would be called friendly fire. One ends up just as dead.
— John Frohnmayer, Leaving Town Alive
I am completely opposed to the British National Party
—  I couldn't possibly support people who find fluorescent yellow flyers appealing.
We’ve gone from a planet ruled by natural geography to political geography to kinetically functional geography to a cyber geography that is ruled by ideological variation rather than politically constructed boarders.
— James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
The way to stifle China’s growth is to inhibit the flow of their connectivity. In order to slow down Chinese expansion, we need to cripple their cyber-kinetic-political connectivity. Indirect polarization, in all forms, must be at the forefront of the agenda when conducting influence operations on all things China.
— James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
The U.K. should begin with an FAnd have a C after the U,And it should end in E DNow that we’ve left the E.U.
— Harry Whitewolf, Underdogs Unite
The bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later.
— Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy
Going by current developments, India is sure to catch up - not in 50, but in another 20 years - with America... of the 1860s!Although why anyone would want to ‘catch up with’ even present day America, is beyond comprehension.
— Dr Deepak Hiwale, aka 'Dr Dee'
Truth can only be found in a person's record of actions, not their list of intentions.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
A true leader is a servant.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I am far more fearful of the USA government than I am of North Korea.
— Steven Magee
But great tragedy is universal
— Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
...they all were, in the grip of a huge fantasy: the idea that men would not be judged by who they once were and what they had once done, if they only decided to be different. They wanted to step away from the responsibilities of history and be free.
— Salman Rushdie, Golden House
The alphabet is where all our secrets begin.
— Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties
— George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism
The power of the intelligentsia is demonstrated not only by their ability to create a general climate of opinion that strikes fear into those who oppose their agenda but also by their ability to create a climate of opinion which richly rewards those political leaders whose decisions are consonant with the vision of the intelligentsia.
— Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society
In politics, it often pays to be ahead of the curve. That holds true for corporate governance too, even more so when politics enter the equation.
— Mmanti Umoh
The greatest thieves are not caught. Not because it’s not known that they are thieves but because you cannot accuse them of robbery and live. These thieves are praised as national heroes and liberators or as successful entrepreneurs.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
It's time, more than ever, to shrug off apathy. For Socialism not to be a dirty word any more. This is a time for heroes.
— Jake, The Corbyn Comic Book
The parents of politics are lack of control and seeking to control. The parents of leadership are influence and trust.
— Richie Norton
Politics is not leadership. It never has been. It never will be.
— Richie Norton
People who make big promises can also make big lies. Trust first, but exercise smart trust. You can be the most productive and most effective, but politics show up as ego and jealousy for bosses who can’t perform. If your job or task is codependent, you can be sabotaged. Always seek interdependence and people who are authentic at the core, not blue in the face.
— Richie Norton
When we were kids and believed that the game was not fair, we stopped playing. Well, the game of governance is not fair, so we need to stop playing along.
— Charbel Tadros
The good thing about democracy is that every vote counts. The problem with democracy is that every vote counts.
— Charbel Tadros
In the end, everyone came to the conclusion that however ungainly, however inefficient, however elliptical ASEAN's ways are, it's still better than not having an ASEAN. That is the genius of ASEAN foreign policy.
— George Yeo
Even the purest of souls get ravished and consumed by the most thirsty quintessential desire to possess power.
— Sirio Berati
In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.
— Chinua Achebe, A Man of the People
The Awakening Land" p615What was the world coming to and what hearty pleasures folks today missed out of life! One bag of meal her pap said, used to make a whole family rejoice. Now folks came ungrateful from the store, grumbling they had to carry such a heavy market basket. Was that the way this great new country of hers was going to go? The easier they made life, the weaker and sicker the race had to get? Once a majority of the men got weak and soft, what weak, harmful ways would they vote the country into then? Well, her pap's generation could get down on their knees and thank the Almighty they lived and died when they did. How would they ever have come and settled this wild country if they said to each other, "Ain't you afeard?" How would her pappy have fetched them the long way out here on foot if he'd kept asking all the time, "Are you all right! How do ye feel? Do ye reckon ye kin make it?" No, those old time folks she knew were scared of nothing, or if they were, they didn't say so. They knew they ran bad risks moving into Indian country, but they had to die some time. They might as well live as they pleased and let others bury them when the time came. Now Libby's generation, it seemed, lived mostly to study and fret about ailing and dying.
— Conrad Richter
When we use power and group identity, we hold ourselves separate from other groups of people, and demonstrate our beliefs that some of use are more deserving than others, and there are not enough good things to go around. This blinkers us, There are a myriad of other ways humans can interact to meet the needs of us all.
— Yasmin Davar, Our Peaceful Planet: Healing Ourselves and Our World for a Sustainable Future
Facts get shares
—  opinions get shrugs.
Most the power of authoritarianism is freely given.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
In the politics of the every day, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.
— Timothy Snyder
Like Hitler, the President used the word lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking and presented journalism as a campaign against himself.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
You're not supposed to have to be rich or lucky to have a chance to do great things. Opportunity is supposed to be for everyone. And that's why I'm a Democrat.
— Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
If we don't start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it's going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching reasonable political discourse.
— Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis - embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy. This is required not only to create a political context to dramatically lower emissions, but also to help us cope with the disasters we can no longer avoid. Because in the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism.
— Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
There should no be teams to divide a nation. There should be no such thing as "Them' vs. Us' - only 'WE'. The only interests that should be discussed in Washington are those that serve the best interests of the entire country. So why is there a blue team and a red one? What does it really mean to be conservative or liberal? And if you are conservative, does that mean you will blindly agree with every leader and issue brought forth by your team? And does it mean you only serve and support the upper class even if you are low class? How does that work in your favor exactly? I understand why professionals raking in heavy figures a year would hail the Republican slant for tax reasons, but why would a young unemployed kid from Jersey with an interest in acrobatics give a damn?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Is being a Republican really about touting "wholesome" conservative values? Or a particular income strata? And when you say you are 'conservative', what are you really 'conserving'?And what does it mean to be a Democrat? To be half of an aristocrat? Or to be half free? Or does it mean you are more liberal? To do or think what exactly?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
At the end of the day, I do not care how many Democrats or Republicans are in office. What I do care about is whether our leader is truly serving THE PEOPLE or only his/her own pockets. Is our leader in tune with the concerns and needs of the man on the street - or only issues concerning private interests? Is this leader uniting or dividing the country? Milking or contributing to it? Building and preserving it -- or bringing it all down?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
They that milk the cow everyday without feeding it well must never complain about how it keeps growing lean
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Politics devoid of ethics does not further human welfare, and life without morality reduces humans to the level of beasts.
— Dalai Lama XIV
I grew up in Germany. Europe is far more liberal than America. Even most conservative right-wing parties over there are to the left of the US Democrats on many issues. For example, it wouldn't occur to even the most right-wing party in Europe to oppose universal healthcare. But this isn't a book about politics. It's about sex and drugs. You know, the good stuff.
— Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Going to New York
In Germany, people will agree in theory that prostitution should be legal, but they usually won't admit that they themselves have ever gone to a prostitute: "Yeah, it should be legal, and I have no problem with it, but I would never go to one. I'm above that." Then they secretly go to one anyway. On the down low. They won't admit it in polite company, because they don't want to look trashy.
— Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Going to New York
He is the King with your consent, stop blaming and start making better choices.
— Haritha Velpureddy
Was i Doomed from the Start?Some pundits have also said my campaign was doomed from the start, either because of my weaknesses as a candidate or because America was caught up in a historic wave of angry, tribal populism sweeping the world. Maybe. But don't forget I wan the popular vote by nearly three million, roughly the same margin by which George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004. It's hard to see how that happens if I'm hopeless out of step with the American people. Still as I've discussed throughout this book, I do think it's fair to say there was a fundamental mismatch between how i approach politics and what a lot of the country wanted to hear in 2016. I've learned that even the best plans and proposals can land on deaf ears when people are disillusioned by a broken political system and disgusted with politicians. When people are angry and looking for someone to blame, they don't want to hear your ten-point plan to create jobs and raise wages. They want you to be angry, too.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
Never be satisfied with less than your very best effort. If you strive for the top and miss, you'll still 'beat the pack.
— Gerald R. Ford
...sometimes offering a quality daily opinion about what’s going on in American politics feels like trying to compose a beautiful symphony using only the recorded screams of psychiatric patients.
— Caitlin Johnstone
My mind is like the Titanic, to many brain cells for the life boats.
— Steve Merrick
BREXIT?So mental a political tap dance, that it makes riding a porcupine bareback over a cliff seem the only sane thing to do.
— Steve Merrick
Trust a politician? I would rather staple gun my nuts to the back of a charging rhino.
— Steve Merrick
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.
— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murdered in the chest - without asking to be paid.
— Chinua Achebe, A Man of the People
In plain English, you need to wrestle the doubts and accusations that it’s all just bullshit. And, needless to say, the majority of the work of the triple-H population is undeniably so. The reason that it’s so valuable to society is just that some of it isn’t bullshit and even a small percentage of genuine innovations of software, culture or lifestyle can have a huge impact. Still, you never quite know if you are the bullshitter or the hero, or if you are being sold utter bullshit.
— Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One
Let’s return to the main argument. People are hurting as hell. It matters. We should do something to make them happier, if we can.
— Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One
We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.
— Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One
The women of the world will dominate politics, some day, and you mustn't be too old-fashioned in your notions to join the procession of progress.
— L. Frank Baum, Phoebe Daring: A Story for Young Folk
It takes courage with true humility and steadfastness to win confidence and admiration
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
we see that an aspect of the work of the masses consists in investigating and opening up the question of names
— Sylvain Lazarus, L'intelligence de la politique
Didn’t somebody once say ‘Politics is the art of the possible’?” “Quite true—which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.
— Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey
No country can police corruption in other countries when it itself is not free from corruption. You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
People need to remember that a man who is deceptive deceives by hiding that he is deceptive. He is not going to openly validate that he is deceiving you because his aim is to deceive you.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
If we are not registering bad events in history to learn from them, then why are we even still publishing them at all? Is it really an outlandish ideal to want a peaceful and prosperous nation, one ruled only by compassion, truth and justice? As of now, there is no peace, no truth, no prosperity, no compassion - and NO COMMON SENSE. Since when did the words human and inhumane share the same meaning?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Here, the mother country is satisfied to keep some feudal rulers in her pay; there, dividing and ruling she has created a native bourgeoisie, sham from beginning to end; elsewhere she has played a double game: the colony is planted with settlers and exploited at the same time. Thus Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavoured by every means to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonised societies. Fanon hides nothing: in order to fight against us the former colony must fight against itself: or, rather, the two struggles form part of a whole.
— Jean-Paul Sarte
No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind
— Karl Marx
We write history with our feet and with our presece and our collective voice and vision. And yet, of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless, or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. These are the forces that prefer the giant remain asleep.
— Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
I sensed that if I were ever to meet [Senator Orrin] Hatch face-to-face there would be little that we could agree upon. There was something about watching Hatch that reminded me of unpleasant, futile political arguments I had had in my life. I wondered whether such political disagreements did not issue from underlying, perhaps even innate characteristics. Certainly, experience teaches us that when we encounter another person whom we instinctively dislike, constructive political dialogue is not likely to follow. Humans can intuitively sense through a variety of subtle clues (i.e., dress, accent, gestures) when another person possesses a mix of cultural and psychological characteristics that is so substantially different to our own that political discord is also likely. Put otherwise, a liberal can usually smell a conservative, and vice versa. Moreover, the smell is not a pleasant one.-- Red Genes, Blue Genes: Exposing Political Irrationality
— Guillermo Jimenez
Politics is not just about power and money games, politics can be about the improvement of people's lives, about lessening human suffering in our world and bringing about more peace and more justice. -Paul Wellstone (Minnesota Senator, Al Franken predecessor)
— Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
Paul's greatest contribution to the progressive cause wasn't what he accomplished in the senate, although he accomplished a lot. It's the way he inspired others to take action, and taught them to be effective, and gave them the confidence to stand up and shout about what they believed it.
— Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
The world is not static and the status quo is not sacred.
— Truman Doctrine
Does the flat tax work?...The flat tax works in a country that is a former Communist state, with no investment capital, and low wage rates, which needs to build a capitalist economy from a base of approximately zero. The flat tax works if people are willing to pay a 20% sales tax on everything they buy to make up for lower revenue. The flat tax works if employers are willing to pay 34%, or more, in Social Security taxes for every employee they hire. The flat tax works in a country where almost everyone has the same amount of wealth so there's no need for the distributive effect of graduated rates. And if all these conditions are met, the flat-rate tax will probably work as long as the economy is on a path of steady growth.
— T R Reid, A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System
If we are not applying the lessons to be gained from yesterday's history to address the problems of today - then why does any of it matter? Does Babe Ruth's baseball score from 1917 matter to us today? No. Does it matter that Gandhi bickered with his wife, or that Lincoln got into a brawl over Sally at a bar? No. Then why do tribal matches that happened thousands of years ago still mean so much to us today? To keep us from moving forward? To remind us of our racial differences and indifference? To revive tribal bitterness? And what father or God would want his children to keep a record of every argument they have ever had with each other - if there is nothing positive - only harm - to be gained by constantly reminding them? Would a wise man steer his followers to hold onto past hurts - or to squeeze them for every drop of wisdom that could be gained from them - then release them? Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only more hatred. Who wants that? And why?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
If we are not registering bad events in history to learn from them, then why are we even still registering them at all? Is it really an outlandish ideal to want a peaceful and prosperous nation, ruled only by compassion, truth and justice? As of now, there is no peace, no truth, no prosperity, no compassion - and NO COMMON SENSE. Since when did the words human and inhumane share the same meaning? Think, people. I am only asking you to THINK.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
...the working classes—that motor of social transformation which Marx increasingly stipulated for the role of the proletariat; the dispossessed and alienated revolutionary vehicle of his early writings, which later became defined and analysed into the collective worker who 'owner' nothing but his labour power—chains rather than assets. In the event, the working class actually came to fulfill most of the optimistic prognoses of liberal thinkers; they have become largely 'socialized' through access to privilege, consumption, organization, and voting participation, as well as obtaining massive social benefits. They have become supporters of the status quo—not vociferous perhaps, but tacit approvers and beneficiaries none the less. The ferment today comes from sections of the community to whom political and social thought has never hitherto assigned any specific role; who have hitherto never developed specific political institutions of their own: youth, mostly students; racial minorities, a few dissident intellectuals—these form the new 'proletariat'. The basis of their dissatisfaction is not necessarily and always an objective level of deprivation but rather a mixture of relative deprivation—consciousness of possibilities and of the blockages which prevent their attainment—and above all an articulate dissatisfaction with the society around them. There is no good reason why such groups should not form, and act like, a proletariat in a perfectly Marxist sense. The economic causality collapses; the analysis of a decaying bourgeois society and the determination to overthrow it remain.
— J. P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, Volume I