c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children
We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost...Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.
— Ron Paul
The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
— Will Rogers
What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.
— Terry Jones
Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.
— Edward Abbey
Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.
— Mark Twain
I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journa
— Walter Cronkite
Kelsier exhaled in exasperation. “Elend Venture? You risked your life—risked the plan, and our lives—for that fool of a boy?”Vin looked up, glaring at him. “Yes.”“What is wrong with you, girl?” Kelsier asked. “Elend Venture isn’t worth this.”She stood angrily, Sazed backing away, the cloak falling the ﬂoor. “He’s a good man!”“He’s a nobleman!”“So are you!” Vin snapped. She waved a frustrated arm toward the kitchen and the crew. “What do you think this is, Kelsier? The life of a skaa? What do any of you know about skaa? Aristocratic suits, stalking your enemies in the night, full meals and nightcaps around the table with your friends? That’s not the life of a skaa!”She took a step forward, glaring at Kelsier. He blinked in surprise at the outburst.“What do you know about them, Kelsier?” she asked. “When’s the last time you slept in an alley, shivering in the cold rain, listening to the beggar next to you cough with a sickness you knew would kill him? When’s the last time you had to lay awake at night, terriﬁed that one of the men in your crew would try to rape you? Have you ever knelt, starving, wishing you had the courage to knife the crewmember beside you just so you could take his crust of bread? Have you ever cowered before your brother as he beat you, all the time feeling thankful because at least you had someone who paid attention to you?”She fell silent, pufﬁng slightly, the crewmembers staring at her.“Don’t talk to me about noblemen,” Vin said. “And don’t say things about people you don’t know. You’re no skaa— you’re just noblemen without titles.”She turned, stalking from the room. Kelsier watched her go, shocked, hearing her footsteps on the stairs. He stood, dumbfounded, feeling a surprising ﬂush of ashamed guilt.And, for once, found himself without anything to say.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
— Plato
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.
— Max Stirner
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
— Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love
Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.
— H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women
People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.
— Shane MacGowan
The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation.
— James Freeman Clarke
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled
— Aristotle
Eating is an agricultural act.
— Wendell Berry, What Are People for Essays By Wendell B
I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.
— Ronald Reagan
We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.
— Jon Stewart
If you're not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it?
— Michelle Templet
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
— Samuel Adams
To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing. They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights. They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing--but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
— Harry Truman
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
— William F. Buckley Jr.
Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
— H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s a good bet you remember ‘No new taxes’ and ‘Out of the loop’ and ‘No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time’ and Did not inhale’ and ‘Did not have sex with that woman’ and etc. etc. It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot. So who wouldn’t fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect?
— David Foster Wallace, The Best American Essays 2007
Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?
— Arun D. Ellis
A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise 
—  compassionate if we care enough
If this is the price to be paid for an idea, then let us pay. There is no need of being troubled about it, afraid, or ashamed. This is the time to boldly say, “Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another; I believe in the total disintegration and dissolution of the principle and practice of authority; I am an Anarchist, and if for this you condemn me, I stand ready to receive your condemnation.
— Voltairine de Cleyre, Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre -- Anarchist, Feminist, Genius
Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.(Said to President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner)
— Stephen Colbert
The Republicans believe in the minimum wage -- the more the minimum, the better.
— Harry Truman
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
— Otto von Bismarck
Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.
— Dave Barry, Dave Barry's History of the Millennium
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
— Robert A. Heinlein
A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.
— Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
— Winston S. Churchill
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.
— Edward Abbey
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. 
— Wilhelm Reich
I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Some leaders are born women.
— Geraldine Ferraro
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
— Taylor Caldwell
I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
— Charles de Gaulle
Donald Rumsfeld. Love him or hate him, you've gotta admit: a lot of people hate him.
— Jon Stewart
The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger.
— Ron Paul
The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.
— Samuel Adams
The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.
— Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...
— Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for cent
— James Madison
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.
— George Carlin
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual. -Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.
— Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World
In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
— Thomas Jefferson
from Bill Clinton speech- People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...
— Bill Clinton
Spending time looking for what is missing in your life is futile; if you fail to look within yourself. When we challenge everything we believe we are, we reveal that which we never knew about our own selves.
— Nicolas G. Janovsky, Gay: A New Path Forward
It is not power that corrupts but fear.
— Aung San Suu Kyi
By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.
— John le Carré
We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists.
— Bill Maher
If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.
— Esther M. Friesner, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding
How did sex come to be thought of as dirty in the first place? God must have been a Republican. 
— Will Durst
CNN found that Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America. Women admire her because she's strong and successful. Men admire her because she allows her husband to cheat and get away with it. 
— Jay Leno
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling...
— V.S. Naipaul, Magic Seeds
It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.
— Henry A. Wallace
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days. 
— Gore Vidal
No more good must be attempted than the nation can bear
— Solon
I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.
— Tom Clancy
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a middle-of-the-road moderate and the rest of you are crazy.
— Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.
— Gustave Flaubert
Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation
— Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish - where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source - where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials - and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act agains
— John F. Kennedy
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?
— Will Rogers
American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.
— Marshall McLuhan
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country -- vote Republican. 
— Barbara Ehrenreich
If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.
— Jenny Holzer, Jenny Holzer
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
— Thomas Jefferson
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
— H.L. Mencken
The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies — socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor — and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.
— John Pilger
Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.
— John W. Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience
What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms.
— Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.
— Stephen King, The Stand
another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Morrison laughs derisively. “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.
— Toni Morrison
It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.
— Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
— Adlai E. Stevenson II
Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away...whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism...or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay...The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so.
— Ron Paul
The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people.
— Bill Maher
I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them for a political party - with a chance of government perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail." (p, 195)
— Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.
— Benjamin Disraeli
So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
New Rule: Stop asking Miss USA contestants if they believe in evolution. It’s not their field. It’s like asking Stephen Hawking if he believes in hair scrunchies. Here’s what they know about: spray tans, fake boobs and baton twirling. Here’s what they don’t know about: everything else. If I cared about the uninformed opinions of some ditsy beauty queen, I’d join the Tea Party.
— Bill Maher
Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.
— Mark Twain
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.
— Will Rogers
To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.
— Aristophanes, The Knights
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. 
— Nikita Khrushchev
If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance.
— Dennis Kucinich
Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.
— G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a bellyache?
— David Eddings, Belgarath the Sorcerer
And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
A flag is supposed to represent everything that a country does. It doesn't only represent the good things. If you burn the flag, you're burning the flag for what you perceive to be the bad things the country has done. it's only a symbol. It's only a piece of cloth.
— George Carlin
the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
— George Bernard Shaw
The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan
We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States.
— Ann Coulter
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.
— Franklin P. Adams
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities.
— Sarah Palin
Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
— Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right
Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.
— Allen Ginsberg
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.
— Frank Zappa
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
— John Maynard Keynes
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
— Sarah Palin
We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them,and drives us further apart.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars—they would think the country has gone insane.
— Noam Chomsky
We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern
—  that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed
Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them
— William F. Buckley Jr.
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. 
— Reinhold Niebuhr
Be out of the mainstream. I'm out of the mainstream. I enjoy it, who wants to be in the mainstream?
— Bill Maher
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
That's what I like to call him, "the current president." I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.
— Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation
Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.
— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
I am naïve and I have fucked up but I tell you something else. I believe in change. I don't mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don't mind giving my life to this because I'm only alive because of the compassion and love of others.
— Russell Brand
Politics is not about big money or power games
—  it's about the improvement of people's lives
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
— Pierre Trudeau
The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular. 
— Jay Leno
I honestly see the battle between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative as the exact same dynamic--there's a group of people in this world that don't like conflict and care about what other people are going through, and then there's this other group of people in the world who hate that. 'Suck it up, man, we're not coddling you, take care of yourself, what's your problem?' It's jocks versus geeks, and I've always referred to life as perpetual high school because it never stops.
— Paul Feig
Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.
— Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy
How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Presidents are selected, not elected.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the
— Clint Eastwood
While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
— Eugene V. Debs
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
— H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women
I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'.
— Margaret Thatcher
I have a deep and profound mistrust of all politicians.
— Craig Ferguson
I can concede that the government has no knowledge of the people, but I believe the people know less of the government. There are useless officials, evil, if you like, but there are also good ones, and these are not able to accomplish anything because they encounter an inert mass, the population that takes little part in matters that concern them.
— José Rizal, Noli Me Tángere
Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right.
— T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz -- Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.
— Benito Juárez
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
— Albert Einstein
There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
— Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction
I still wonder how policy officials... can sit down at the table with their families and have any appetite for food, or go to sleep at night, knowing that they failed to act. Human beings were sacrificed for political convenience. This would be enough, I think, to turn any reasonable man into a prisoner of his own conscience for the rest of his life.
— Paul Rusesabagina
You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate mur
— Jesse Ventura
Until you realize how easily it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.
— Evita Ochel
In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.
— Graydon Carter
There is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
— David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away.
— John Frohnmayer, Leaving Town Alive
As the saying goes: God made man and woman
—  Colonel Colt made them equal.
Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg. And Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not... to Bill O
— Keith Olbermann
There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.
— Gore Vidal, Death in the Fifth Position
It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.
— Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
I am the illegal alien of commentary. I will do the jokes that no one else will do.
— Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
— Warren Buffett
Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.
— Naomi Klein
Today everybody is talking about the fact that we live in one world; because of globalization, we are all part of the same planet. They talk that way, but do they mean it? We should remind them that the words of the Declaration [of Independence] apply not only to people in this country, but also to people all over the world. People everywhere have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When the government becomes destructive of that, then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticize - to do what we always praise and call heroic when we look upon the dissenters and critics in totalitarian countries who dare to speak out.
— Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War and Other Essays
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.
— George Carlin
People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.
— Noam Chomsky
Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.
— Stephen King, The Stand
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
— Wendell Berry
Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Enviroment.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.
— Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. ... When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick. .... If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.
— Alice Cooper
The brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, The History of Freedom
...she studied his clothes, his top hat. “And you’ve just come from Parliament? How are you finding that?”“It’s much like piracy. You tell your enemies that if they don’t fall in line, you’ll leave them to die.
— Meljean Brook, The Iron Duke
But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, no, search your soul, lovie--is the vampire so bad?
— Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories
DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad.BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between.(an early comment on backlash, from "Glossary for the Eighties")
— Ellen Willis
It’s amazing that people don’t understand that the more the market is involved and the smaller the government, the lower the price, the better the distribution, and the higher the quality.
— Ron Paul, Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom
Communicating with the federal government is like talking to a computer that's crashing.
— Steve Kluger
If you're looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came. because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same.
— Bob Dylan
He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I've got daughters. Nine years old and six years old. First of all, I'm gonna teach them about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them PUNISHED with a baby.
— Barack Obama
Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
— Winston S. Churchill
You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.
— George Sand