c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?’ ‘To make them confess.’ ‘No, that is not the reason. Try again.’ ‘To punish them.’ ‘No!’ exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. ‘No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?
— George Orwell, 1984
That’s the difference between good military commanders and good politicians, John Geary. You’ve shown me that a good military commander spends the lives of their people reluctantly and with regret, but does spend them when necessary. The good politician does the same thing with principles. There aren’t any fine burials for sacrificed principles, though.
— Jack Campbell
...[T]he right way is to give one's attention first to the highest good of the young, just as you expect a good gardener to give his attention first to the young plants, and after that to the others. - Socrates
— Plato, Euthyphro
True understanding involves sincere honesty and holistic, deep listening without the political corruption of evil power players. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my book K.H. trilogy
— Angelica Hopes
Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence-for evidence is always relative-or unchallengeable witnesses-for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!)… In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute…
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
We can have no significant understanding of any culture unless we also know the silences that were intentionally created and guaranteed along with it.– Gerald Sider.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Many criminologists believe that the source of the state’s pacifying effect isn’t just its brute coercive power but the trust it commands among the populace. After all, no state can post an informant in every pub and farmhouse to monitor breaches of the law, and those that try are totalitarian dictatorships that rule by fear, not civilized societies where people coexist through self-control and empathy. A Leviathan can civilize a society only when the citizens feel that its laws, law enforcement, and other social arrangements are legitimate, so that they don’t fall back on their worst impulses as soon as Leviathan’s back is turned.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Political pundits are under professional obligation to regard the obvious as being too obvious.
— P.J. O'Rourke, How the Hell Did This Happen?: The US Election of 2016
There are no undecideds. There are only people that decided to be undecided.
— Bogdan Vaida
Only priests and politicians benefit from a people's ignorance.
— Ki Longfellow, The Secret Magdalene
I am apt, however, to entertain a Suspicion, that the World is still too young to fix any general stable Truths in Politics, which will remain true to the latest Posterity. We have not as yet had Experience of above three thousand Years; so that not only the Art of Reasoning is still defective in this Science, as well as in all others, but we even want sufficient Materials, upon which we can reason. 'Tis not sufficiently known, what Degrees of Refinement, either in Virtue or Vice, human Nature is susceptible of; nor what may be expected of Mankind from any great Revolution in their Education, Customs, or Principles.
— David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political and Literary
I began to entertain a suspicion, that no man in this age was sufficiently qualified for such an undertaking; and that whatever any one should advance on that head would, in all probability, be refuted by further experience, and be rejected by posterity. Such mighty revolutions have happened in human affairs, and so many events have arisen contrary to the expectation of the ancients, that they are sufficient to beget the suspicion of still further changes.
— David Hume, Selected Essays
Of all sciences there is none, where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.
— David Hume, Selected Essays
There are no moral obligations in the game of empire.
— A.H. Septimius
I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.
— Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Unless institutional power reinforces the hurt and prejudice suffered by a group, it is not oppression. By definition, a person of color cannot be racist, or a woman sexist, because they do not have the institutionalized power to act on their prejudices. Also, by definition, all white people are racist, not just because of the personal attitudes that we usually think of as racist, but because of the privilege white skin brings in our society. Whites cannot say they are not racist because they are born into a society that teaches racism and reinforces white privilege every day even before they can be aware of it. Whites can choose, however, to be active antiracists, which means making a commitment to a lifelong process of learning to recognize racism in themselves and in the institutions they are part of and taking steps to stop it.
— Linda Stout, Bridging the Class Divide: And Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing
Established politicians are also bumping into a new cast of characters within corridors of legislative power. In 2010 parliamentary elections in Brazil, for example, the candidate who won the most votes anywhere in the country (and the second-most-voted congressman in the country's history) was a clown - an actual clown who went by the name of Tiririca and wore his clown costume while he campaigned. His platform was as anti-politician as it gets. "I don't know what a representative in congress does," he told voters in YouTube video that attracted millions of voters, "but if you send me there I will tell you". He also explained that his goal was "to help needy people in this country, but especially my family".
— 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
The heirs of Jefferson and Madison would be the Democratic-Republicans, the heirs of Hamilton and Adams would be the Federalists. But the heirs of Washington would be all Americans.
— John P. Avlon
I am political in spite of myself. I don't want to do the things I know I have to do, don't want to expose myself to disapproval, to retribution, don't want to go to meetings and demonstrations, distribute leaflets, don't want to ask people for signatures, for money. I don't do these things as naturally as I breathe, the way I imagine real political people do, real communists, real socialists and feminists, real radicals, real troublemakers, real champions of the people. I do them because I know I've got to, because I am convinced it's the only way to make changes, to stop abuses. I do them almost as a last resort. I do them because I've been putting off doing them, avoiding them for months, because finally the necessity has gripped me and overcome my reluctance, my desire for the warmth of my room, for my books, for my people, for the reassurance of my homely habits.
— Rosario Morales, Getting Home Alive
We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight.
— Kermit Roosevelt III, Allegiance
An educated, healthy & confident nation is harder to govern
— Tony Benn
Politics doesn't align with emotions. An emotional politician is most likely to be a tyrannical leader.
— Henry Johnson Jr
Power is a beautiful thing.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
The tragic brilliance of politics and control is found in the ability to get the masses arguing over which poison they should drink.
— Steve Maraboli
Mothers and fathers are born everywhere. What the world needs are leaders.
— Abhijit Naskar
A nation with a thousand awakened citizens and a corrupt leader, is much more alive than a nation with an awakened leader and a thousand corrupt citizens.
— Abhijit Naskar
In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.
— Noam Chomsky, The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians
If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das Kapital and more time to studying the Internet and the human genome.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions
— Jyn Erso
The problem with people who have power is that they start thinking more about what it takes to keep that power than they do about whats right or wrong or just plain a bad idea. Here's a tip for you: if you're ever in a position to be making calls on right and wrong that can impact an entire nation, run your decisions past a six year old. If they look at you in horror and tell you you're getting coal in your stocking for the rest of your life, you should probably reconsider your course of action. Unless you want to be remembered as a monster, in which case, knock yourself out.
— Mira Grant, Blackout
If the Nazis are Socialists simply because they call themselves Socialists, then North Korea really is a Democratic Republic.
— Atom Tate
Why is it so many politicians are wealthy?Is it because they make good investments?Or is it simply.Because they are good investments?
— Anthony T. Hincks
His supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show where the dangers are.
— Walter Lippmann
Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
The whole notion of disruption is adolescent: It assumes that after the teenagers make a mess, the adults will come and clean it up. But there are no adults. We own this mess.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Politics is an enemy of productivity
— Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'
Educated and ambitious, with their own forthright opinions, the women of the Garvey set did more to determine political direction than many councillors. Their involvement in public life and political machinations was such that the Shylonian ambassador was able to report, to his monarch, that the women of the Garvey clique were ‘politicians first, homemakers second.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
What had, moments ago, appeared a dangerous gambit, now seemed an elegant coup de maître.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
Democracy is an illusion in which we all believe.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Leadership by deception isn't leadership. It's fraud.
— DaShanne Stokes
When you're dealing with frauds and liars, listen more to what they don't say than what they do.
— DaShanne Stokes
Scratch a “libertarian” these days, and you will find...a leftist.
— Murray Rothbard
We're roughage," Tyger said. "If we don't cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we're there.
— Neal Shusterman, Scythe
The idea that "Americans hate taxes" has become a truism without the benefit of being true. Instead, Americans see paying taxes as a civic obligation and a political act. To be a taxpayer, Americans believe, is something to be proud of. It is evidence that one is a responsible, contributing, and upstanding member of society, a person worthy of respect in the community and representation in the government.
— Vanessa Williamson, Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes
The campaign website was funded by Armistead, and he personally authored the content. He was determined that the campaign's values and goals would fit on one page. The website developer, who was experienced with political campaigns, was opposed to this. He lobbied for detailed policy statements and explanations, which was the conventional approach. But Armistead disagreed. The website developer thus learned that day that core principles were more important than thousands of words of speculative verbiage.
— Rodney Page, Powers Not Delegated
It'll be an unholy muddle, that's for sure," he was saying. "Me and Hardin and Baker all with our claws out for the same seat. The thing will have to be done carefully or we'll end up with out tidy little Whig house divided.""Why don't you take turns?""It's worth thinking about, but no matter how much you'd like politics to be a cotillion it just naturally wants to be a dirt fight.
— Stephen Harrigan, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln
The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal.
— Henry Martyn Robert, Parliamentary Law
I’m a politician so I only endorse myself.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
In democracy, our most important tool is to vote. But our power tool is when we have the power to influence others on who to vote for.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
The moment you vote, you are a citizen. But moment you make your vote public, you are a politician.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
Vote; it’s the most important right granted to you as a citizen. But unless you are a politician, stay out of politics because your gains will not change anything and your losses will only make you waste your time and many friendships.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
With a [democratic] government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened. While exploitation and expropriation before might have appeared plainly oppressive and evil to the public, they seem much less so, mankind being what it is, once anyone may freely enter the ranks of those who are at the receiving end. Consequently, [exploitation will increase], whether openly in the form of higher taxes or discretely as increased governmental money “creation” (inflation) or legislative regulation.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy--The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order
Osborne paused. “There is... something else.”Clegg sighed.“What?”“Your Wikipedia page.”“What? My-”“It says you're Prime Minister now.”“Well, it was news to me that I'm not, I can't-”“Was it one of your staff?”Silence fell heavily on the room. Clegg tilted his head to one side.“Are you... what are you...” he began.“I'm asking because if it was, it could be... serious.” Another pause. This time, Clegg couldn't help but smile in disbelief.“Are you going to accuse my staff of a constitutional coup for editing Wikipedia?
— Tom Black, 10 Leaders Britain Never Had
To the modern politician and planner, men are the flies of a summer, oblivious of their past, reckless of their future.
— Russell Kirk, Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales
I also hold a settling of questions by the referendum to be an unsatisfactory procedure, because there are no simple political questions which can be answered merely by Yes and No. The masses are also more prone even than Parliaments to be led away by heterodox opinions, and to be swayed by vigorous ranting. It is impossible to formulate a wise internal or external policy in a popular assembly.
— Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State
Princes give rewards with their own hands,But death or punishment by the hands of other.
— John Webster, The White Devil
But Frances was beginning to feel that somewhere along the line, property, business, and all that contributes to the creation of wealth, must give back to government enough to guarantee adequate safeguarding of human welfare. The question would be, how to protect human beings against homelessness, starvation, and dependent old age without breaking down human initiative. She was seeing this as one fundamental problem of the government of the future; seeing too that somewhere leaders must arise who will be able to cope with this problem—honest leaders who will see the problem in its many-sidedness, and at last be able to solve it constructively.
— May Martin Van Wye, Eve's Tower
I was born a sheep & I cannot be a goat through pledge of hands.
— Ymatruz, The Coffee Cries Foul
Lying bed, I listened to them, and I wonder now where in truth the real power rested that night: whether in the hands of men like Grimston, men like Edwards. Whether it slept with the King at Oxford in an ordinary bed, dormant, like a taint in the blood. Whether it rested on the waiting benches of the Commons, or whether it went home with their plain occupants, like a shilling in each of their pockets.I think the truth is that, rather than resting in any one of several places, all real power had gone loose by that night through the realm; and the land might have belonged to any man. Any man with the will to say, 'This is what we shall do.
— Beth Underdown, The Witchfinder's Sister
Because taxpaying is seen as an emblem of civic worthiness, denying the poor the status of taxpayers has the effect of denying their political standing. Classing a large percentage of the populace as a kind of second-class citizenry is genuinely toxic for democratic norms.
— Vanessa Williamson, Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes
The heretic is the one who speaks against the community from a place within its territory. He is the enemy within. The heathen, by contrast, is safely behind the walls, excluded by his own invincible arrogance.
— Roger Scruton, England: An Elegy
Bernstein was impressed by Sloan's thoughtfulness. Sloan seemed convinced that the President, whom he very much wanted to see re-elected, had known nothing of what happened before June 17; but he was as sure that Nixon had been ill-served by his surrogates before the bugging and had been put in increasing jeopardy by them ever since. Sloan believed that the prosecutors were honest men, determined to learn the truth, but there were obstacles they had been unable to overcome. He couldn't tell whether the FBI had been merely sloppy or under pressure to follow procedures that would impede an effective investigation. He believed the press was doing its job, but, in the absence of candor from the committee, it had reached unfair conclusions about some people. Sloan himself was a prime example. He was not bitter, just disillusioned. All he wanted now was to clean up his legal obligations - testimony in the trial and in the civil suit - and leave Washington forever. He was looking for a job in industry, a management position, but it was difficult. His name had been in the papers often. He would not work for the White House again even if asked to come back. He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write. Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind. Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily - that wasn't really what was important. But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.
— Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
He believed the press was doing its job, but, in the absence of candor from the committee, it had reached unfair conclusions about some people. Sloan himself was a prime example. He was not bitter, just disillusioned. All he wanted now was to clean up his legal obligations - testimony in the trial and in the civil suit - and leave Washington forever. He was looking for a job in industry, a management position, but it was difficult. His name had been in the papers often. He would not work for the White House again even if asked to come back. He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write. Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind. Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily - that wasn't really what was important. But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.
— Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
The political parties are there to distract us from our systems of government; instead of focusing on the system, we focus on political parties to vote for.Voting is our only encouraged interaction with our systems of government.The choice between political parties fractures our nations yet further, turns our focus on each other, and away from the mechanisms of our systems of government.
— Haroutioun Bochnakian
Currently the best educated and the brightest minds of any nation are not among its elected, but among its public, and in much greater numbers.But even having a great number of the best and the brightest amongst us does not make us capable of installing a working version of direct democracy right away. People who claim that it does, may be there to voluntarily or involuntarily damage the credibility of direct democracy.Direct democracy needs a yet inexistent infrastructure to support the new mechanism that will render the public capable of constituting the experience necessary to domesticate direct democracy, without destabilizing our societies with needless haste, emotions and fractures. One way of doing it may be the constitution of a nation-wide, internet reliant hence fluid, non-political organism parallel but totally hermetic to our representative democracies, with a unique objective: creating the means, platforms and protocols necessary for the public and all the specialists it contains, to communicate horizontally.The public may decide to keep for the moment our representative democracies, but in parallel create an experimental version of direct democracy until we all acquire the necessary perspective and invent new working mechanisms of self-governance. Later the public may decide to have both representative and direct democracies sharing governance for a time, and experience first-hand the advantages and disadvantages of both systems before deciding where to go from there.
— Haroutioun Bochnakian
Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person.
— Robert A. Heinlein, For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs
When and where there is repression, what a woman does when she gets dressed in the morning may be considered political. Wearing or not wearing a veil, disobeying laws that prohibit transgender dressing, or wearing a large Afro in an institution that seeks to diminish the formation of racial alliances are all actions that can serve as challenges to domination
— Maxine Leeds Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race: Culture, Social Movements, and the Politics of Race
It was Abraham Lincoln who struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink of history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.
— Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power
Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress.
— Abhijit Naskar, The Education Decree
As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic— full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it.
— Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution
You are looking at this wrong. You think I hold my territory by the might of my fist. But that's not it. I hold my territory by consent of the governed. I think it is a very American concept, which might be why you never looked for it." — Adam Hauptman, Columbia Basin Pack Alpha, to Iacopo (Jacob) Bonarata, Lord of the Night (master vampire of Milan)
— Patricia Briggs, Silence Fallen
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error.....The propaganda effect of infallibility, the striking success of posing as a mere interpreting agent of predictable forces, has encouraged in totalitarian dictators the habit of announcing their political intentions in the form of prophecy....Mass leaders in power have one concern wich overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress. This is the approach that gave the world, leaders of glorious characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Subhas Chandra Bose (the actual man behind India’s Independence), Vasil Levski (the man who liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman oppression), Nelson Mandela and many more. These people were technically politicians too, but unlike the majority of the politicians ofmodern society, their approach to politics was what it should be in a real system of politics.
— Abhijit Naskar, The Education Decree
Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the "National Security Managers", as they have been recently called by Richard Barnet, who "exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and interpreting the outside world for him".
— Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution
Whoever wants to hide a big scandal is best to stage a small one
— Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Romulus der Große
[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development.
— Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
You know what politique is? It is the French word for a lie. Kdoub! Politique! When you hear the French say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. And when you hear the Moslems, the Friends of Independence, say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. All lies are sins. And so, which displeases Allah more, a lie told by a Nazarene, who doesn’t know the true faith from the false, or a lie told by a Moslem, who does?
— Paul Bowles, The Spider's House
You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon.
— Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power
I am here not to save money but to make more of it to empower the people and make the world a better place.
— Saminu Kanti
No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South.
— Robert A. Caro, Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson Set: The Path to Power; Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate; The Passage of Power
The “social justice” movement is not at all about social justice, but about relentlessly bullying anyone who does not subscribe to their Stalinist ideology.
— Joshua Goldberg
Any man who neglects his conscience is a dangerous animal.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
You would think having your arse constantly kissed would be enjoyable, even just a little. But when it’s a nest of snakes trying to latch on—offering a rim job with their flicking, forked tongues—it’s revolting.
— Emma Chase, Royally Matched
...this is how politics is played. With fakery and false smiles and butcher knives to the back.
— Emma Chase, Royally Matched
We have always trusted the control of our doomsday devices to the “key” elected of our nations.The current “interests” reorganizing the world now transcend the interests of nations.So these weapons will only be launched to serve interests other than that of the nations that launch them
— Hence the “key” elected…
It is going to be too easy for things to start feeling normal—especially if you are someone who is not directly impacted by his actions. So keep reminding yourself:This is not normal.Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your refrigerator, hire a skywriter once a month, tattoo it on your ass.Because a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address.And that is not normal.It is fucked up.
— John Oliver
Silence is the most expensive to buy.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Florence, listen to me carefully. He squeezed her hand. Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place
— Sana Krasikov
From the moment Julian entered the world, Florence had begun to conceive of life as separate from the aspects of its outward circumstances. Over and over, life renewed itself. Over and over, it made itself blind to the death and destruction of the past
— Sana Krasikov
Their courtship unfolded in two settings, a Russian reality overlaid with New York memories
— Sana Krasikov
Was it an instinct towards their future life together that she was already sensing, which made her pull back? For what she was seeing suddenly, in her mind’s eye, was an image of the two of them dancing on the edge of the world, not realising that they were about to fall off
— Sana Krasikov
Only then, as she prepared to cross the avenue, did she again spot the man in the fedora hat. He was at the opposite side of the street from where he’d stood before, but the caramel color of his coat was unmistakable. He was loitering in front of what looked like a Ford V8 parked nose-up on the sidewalk. Florence adjusted her shawl over her shoulders and crossed to the opposite corner of the plaza. When she turned back to look again, he was gone
— Sana Krasikov
Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever she was walking into would affect no one but herself. Now the truth was catching up with her at the speed of her galloping heartbeat…Now they had summoned her. And they knew everything
— Sana Krasikov
Florence imagined the Hammer and Sickle metallurgical plant to be an enormous brick factory like the ones in New York. But as she approached she saw it was in fact a small city of its own
— Sana Krasikov
A Red Riding Hood out of her depths in the woods of socialism
— Sana Krasikov
She was arriving at a revelation that the secret to living was simply forgetting
— Sana Krasikov
The Bolshevik leaders perched atop the Mausoleum were no easier to tell apart than chess pawns. But Florence too was certain that she could recognise the twinkling eyes of Joseph Stalin, which looked down at her each workday from the oil painting above Timofeyev’s desk
— Sana Krasikov
Sunset was just then settling over Red Square. There seemed some hidden vision to be gleaned. A message about man’s chaotic spirit and his sombre dignity. His dignity and his power. His power and his purpose. She was sure that there was some thread there, but the burden of decoding it made her feel too tired
— Sana Krasikov
Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks have been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air
— Sana Krasikov
Sergey described the mighty furnaces and plants rising up from the steppes. “How far we’ve come. How much work there is still to do!” She would have to see it herself one day, with her own eyes. Florence reread the last line with a turbulent flip in her stomach. Was this an invitation?
— Sana Krasikov
Our communists aren’t like your communists. In New York they’re always on the street demonstrating, but their demands are absurd. Slash rents! Free groceries and electricity for the poor! They demand that landlords open up their vacant apartments to house the unemployed. They even demand that the Communist Party distribute unemployment relief instead of the Labor Department. They might as well demand cake and champagne!
— Sana Krasikov
An independent newspaper? It is a newspaper that looks nothing like a newspaper.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Misfortune never comes singly. It's surrounded by bodyguards.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits.
— David Brooks
How singular," murmured Maximillian; "your father hates me, while your grandfather, on the contrary -- What strange feelings are aroused by politics.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
First —we should restrain our anti-colonialist joy here— the question to be raised is: if Europe is in gradual decay, what is replacing its hegemony? The answer is: 'capitalism with Asian values' (which, of course, has nothing to do with Asian people and everything to do with the clear and present tendency of contemporary capitalism as such to suspend democracy). From Marx on, the truly radical Left was never simply 'progressist'. It was always obsessed by the question: what is the price of progress? Marx was fascinated by capitalism, by the unheard-of productivity it unleashed; it was just that he insisted that this very success engenders antagonisms. And we should do the same with the progress of global capitalism today: keep in view its dark underside, which is fomenting revolts.What all this implies is that today's conservatives are not really conservative. While fully endorsing capitalism's continuous self-revolutionizing, they just want to make it more efficient by supplementing it with some traditional institutions (religion, for instance) to constrain its destructive consequences for social life and to maintain social cohesion. Today, a true conservative is the one who fully admits the antagonisms and deadlocks of global capitalisms, the one who rejects simple progressivism, and who is attentive to the dark obverse of progress. In this sense, only a radical Leftist can be today a true conservative.
— Slavoj Žižek, Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism
Each thinking mind is a political mind
— Zaman Ali, Humanity
Blind party loyalty will be our downfall. We must follow the truth wherever it leads.
— DaShanne Stokes
Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.A democracy can never be “done”; updating democracy can never be over.Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.Trusting the updates or the “improvements” of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements.
— Haroutioun Bochnakian, The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.
— Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit
Sociopaths are attracted to politics because the see it as a sphere in which you can be ruthless and step all over people. That fact that some politicians can tell such awful lies is another example of sociopathy. Sociopaths lie—they see nothing wrong with it.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Revolving Door of Life
One cannot enter a State legislature or a prison for felons without becoming, in some measure, a dubious character.
— H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
Help yourself with the state! It's on democracy!
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Utopia's value lies not in its relation to present practice but in its relation to a possible future. Its "practical" use is to overstep the immediate reality to depict a condition whose clear desirability draws us on, like a magnet.
— Krishan Kumar, Utopianism
China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice it is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’. Which means, in plain language: do anything it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city state, they followed this line of thinking even further, and pegged ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, ministers get a raise, as if that is what their job is all about
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
From the day to till the day there are two humans living together they were and they will be involves in political process.
— Zaman Ali, Humanity
Every political mean is imperfect.
— Zaman Ali, Humanity
One of the most important qualities of a president is the ability to inspire, to bring people together for the common good.
— DaShanne Stokes
We must acknowledge and take responsibility for the conflicts we have helped to create, and act to create real change. That, after all, is the true hallmark of democracy--a commitment to justice, honest self-appraisal, and action--even when it means challenging ourselves and the political institutions we hold most dear.
— DaShanne Stokes
Our democracy should aspire to be more democratic.
— DaShanne Stokes
Integrity must become a personal goal of a growing majority in America if we want to be a major world influence.
— Herman L Glaess, Potentiality Enhancement Programs
If you have to stretch that far to reach the justification you want, then perhaps you’re standing upon the wrong pedestal.
— Russell J. Dorn
Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is the political experience.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
It's easy for common people to say what they think about the government. No one listens to them.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Armour belonging to someone else either chops off you or weighs you down or is too tight
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter — yet it’s the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Your moral values & ability to rationalize
—  not your religious beliefs or political affiliations define what you should stand for in society.
Utopia confronts reality not with a measured assessment of the possibilities of change but with the demand for change. 'This is the way the world should be.' It refuses to accept current definitions of the possible because it knows these to be part of the reality that it seeks to change... Wilde was right: 'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.
— Krishan Kumar, Utopianism
We owe our loyalty to each other and to our children's children, not to party politics.
— DaShanne Stokes
Fundamentalism of any kind, be it religious, atheistic, political or educational, is the greatest threat to human excellence – it is a threat to progress – it is a threat to greatness.
— Abhijit Naskar, Principia Humanitas
Laws forbidding adoptees from accessing their original birth certificates are outdated and need to be changed today.
— DaShanne Stokes
Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Truth is hard, propaganda is cheap.
— DaShanne Stokes
Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.
— DaShanne Stokes
Democracy is about the dialogue
—  protest is about initiating the dialogue and freedom of speech is about respecting each other’s dialogue.
Social Security is neither social, nor secure.
— Edw. C. Young
Why didn't the Democrats accomplish more right after the 2006 elections that gave them control of Congress? It wasn't just that they didn't have votes to override a presidential veto or block a filibuster. They didn't use their mandate to substantially change how the public--and the media-- thought about issues. They just tried to be rational, to devise programs to fit people's interests and the polls. Because there was little understanding of the brain, there was no campaign to change brains. Indeed, the very idea of "changing brains" sounds a little sinister to progressives-- a kind of Frankenstein image comes to mind. It sounds Machiavellian to liberals, like what the Republicans do. But "changing minds" in any deep way always requires changing brains. Once you understand a bit more about how brains work, you will understand that politics is very much about changing brains-- and that it can be highly moral and not the least bit sinister or underhanded.
— George Lakoff, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain
No matter their party, people with a conflict of interest should be banned from the Electoral College.
— DaShanne Stokes
Accepting fraud from our leaders means accepting fraud in our personal lives.
— DaShanne Stokes
A second marked characteristic of the Liberal in debate with the conservative is the tacit premise that debateis ridiculous....Many people shrink from arguments over facts because facts are tedious, because they require a formal familiarity with the subject under discussion, and because they can be ideologically dislocative. Many Liberals accept their opinions, ideas, and evaluations as others accept revealed truths.
— William F. Buckley Jr., Up from Liberalism
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."-Jimi Hendrix
— Jimi Hendrix
Fascism thrives in obscurity and darkness.
— DaShanne Stokes
If you lay with a scorpion, don't be surprised when it finally stings you.
— DaShanne Stokes