c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
This is a hard chapter for me to write. I am as uninvolved in biblical citizenship as other Christians. Involvement means front-line duty. Front-line duty means you get shot at. When it comes to getting shot at, I am your basic, Christian coward. I don't like to fight. I don't like to get hit. I don't like to get hurt. I know that as long as I am uninformed and uninvolved, I am safe. I don't have to suffer. Then I read 1 Peter. It tells me that a Spirit-filled, Word-orientated saint will be on the front lines, doing what is right, and suffering. It is hard for me to read and think and discuss in the realm of politics. There are other things I would rather do. It is hard for me to take a firm, intelligent stand on a political issue. It is even harder for me to make it public, and defend it, and have it criticized and ridiculed. In the area of government my comfort zone is way behind the front lines. How about yours? Maybe what we both need to do is volunteer for some front line duty while we are still allowed to carry weapons.
— J. Grant Howard, Balancing Life's Demands: A New Perspective on Priorities
But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.
— G.K. Chesterton
I wasn’t always a demon.My name is Maggie Frew, and I grew up a simple human girl in suburban Iowa. I don’t carry a pitchfork, or have a forked tail. I’m not a creature from Hell. I’m a political campaign manager. Though, I guess some people might argue those are the same thing.
— Patricia Murphy
But when the social entity grows large, becomes a megalopolis, a state, a federation, then the governing machine grows remote, impersonal, even inhuman. It takes money from us for purposes we do not seem to sanction; it treats us as abstract statistics; it controls an army; it supports a police force whose function does not always appear to be protective.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
There are only two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible.
— Alec Douglas-Home
... people always credit prime ministers with more brains than they've got.
— Ken Follett, The Man From St. Petersburg
I am looking forward to the departure of the corrupt Obama administration in 2017.
— Steven Magee
Sure, it may be a little misleading, but who cares? What is truth anyway? Really, who cares about actuality? You and I, we are in the business of perception, of catching eyes, and shaping minds. We tell people what to think before they can decide what to think for themselves. People are vile animals, just like pigs. There is no such thing as ethics. Ha! There is nothing wrong with a Machiavellian trick. People don’t know what they want. That is why they need people like you to lead them. And they will follow you, like a dog following its master. It is quite simple really. The only thing is, you can’t allow them to make up their own mind. You’ve gotta make it up for them. And, like I said, they will follow you. We humans are programmed—maybe genetically, maybe by some predestination—to seek a leader and follow him with unquestioning devotion. It is easier than thinking for ourselves.
— Francisco Grant
Efficiency was just a measurement of how fast money moved from the poor to the rich. We prefer the opposite of efficiency, which is to say, justice.
— Kim Stanley Robinson
History is really a study of the future, not the past.
— Arundhati Roy, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
— John Quincy Adams
Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation.
— George Carlin
Following religious principles because you fear the consequences isn't faith…. It’s superstition.
— T. Rafael Cimino, A Battle of Angels
Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
When the media enjoy such excessive profits from this mass hysteria, what incentive do they have to restrain it?
— T. Rafael Cimino, The Heir Apparent
Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see ‘leading’ and ‘serving’ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can’t tell the difference
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
When a moral man speaks, listen. But when immoral men speak, toss away their words like bad fruit. Truth will never shine from a heart filled with corruption and lies.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
We find the same situation in the economy. On the one hand, the battered remnants of production and the real economy; on the other, the circulation of gigantic amounts of virtual capital. But the two are so disconnected that the misfortunes which beset that capital – stock market crashes and other financial debacles – do not bring about the collapse of real economies any more. It is the same in the political sphere: scandals, corruption and the general decline in standards have no decisive effects in a split society, where responsibility (the possibility that the two parties may respond to each other) is no longer part of the game.This paradoxical situation is in a sense beneficial: it protects civil society (what remains of it) from the vicissitudes of the political sphere, just as it protects the economy (what remains of it) from the random fluctuations of the Stock Exchange and international finance. The immunity of the one creates a reciprocal immunity in the other – a mirror indifference. Better: real society is losing interest in the political class, while nonetheless availing itself of the spectacle. At last, then, the media have some use, and the ‘society of the spectacle’ assumes its full meaning in this fierce irony: the masses availing themselves of the spectacle of the dysfunctionings of representation through the random twists in the story of the political class’s corruption. All that remains now to the politicians is the obligation to sacrifice themselves to provide the requisite spectacle for the entertainment of the people.
— Jean Baudrillard, Screened Out
So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has come up with is to say that violent revolutions can be avoided (and therefore, violent mobs legitimately suppressed) if 'the people' are understood to have the right to challenge the laws through nonviolent civil disobedience.
— David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
Now I think that a true liberal will always prioritize individuals over the group, will always prioritize heresy over orthodoxy, will always prioritize the dissenting voice over the status quo.
— Maajid Nawaz
Hillary has the brains of someone who was born yesterday and the body of someone who died last week.
— Donald Trump's Hair, The Autobiography of Donald Trump's Hair
The real Machiavellian genius of the First Amendment is that free speech turns out to be mostly harmless — a lot of P.C. nit-picking, dingbat conspiracy theories, tedious libertarian screeds and name calling. The only “free speech” that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions.
— Tim Kreider
When asked my advice as I stroll through the town,“A good lady knows how to take a political assassin down.
— Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney
A politician is someone who knows everything about running a campaign and nothing about running a country.
— James Rozoff
Ecologist Paul Ehrlich stressed that people who hold opposing opinions need to engage in open discussion with well-reasoned dissent. Positions should be questioned and criticized, not the people who hold them. Personal attacks preclude open discussion because, once someone is put on the defensive, fruitful exchanges are impossible, at least for the moment.
— Marc Bekoff, Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed: The Fascinating Science of Animal Intelligence, Emotions, Friendship, and Conservation
We tend to make up [stories] in the same circumstances in which people come up with conspiracy theories: ignorance and powerlessness. And they share the same flawed premise as most conspiracy theories: that the world is way more well planned and organised that it really is. They ascribe a malevolent intentionality to what is more likely simple ineptitude or neglect. Most people are just too self-absorbed, well-meaning, and lazy to bother orchestrating Machiavellian plans to slight or insult us. It's more often a boring, complicated story of wrong assumptions, miscommunication, bad administration, and cover-ups - people trying, and mostly failing, to do the right thing, hurting each other not because that's their intention but because it's impossible to avoid.
— Tim Kreider
In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.
— C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
Naturally, people — especially in America — live in the moment and, given the “crisis” orientation of cable news, think that [the 2000s are] the worst period the country has ever gone through. Not really.
— Ivan Eland
The police can use violence to say, expel citizens from a public park because they are enforcing duly constituted laws. Laws gain their legitimacy from the Constitution. The Constitution gains its legitimacy from something called 'the people.' But how did 'the people' actually grant legitimacy to the Constitution? As the American and French revolutions make clear: basically, through acts of illegal violence. So what gives the police the right to use force to suppress the very thing–a popular uprising–that granted them their right to use force to begin with?
— David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
Pardon me for budging into concoction of the aristocrats blowing their trumpets, the demagogues' doctrines, the antagonists' squeals, the hypocrites' assertions, the sycophants fawning adoration, the facebookers' slants, the youthful sneers, the pragmatic notions n of course some acquiescent aspirants....this facebook page is so bombarded by myriad posts....maddening to read n like all.....so here's wishing each one of the revered contestants all the best.....may the deserving win.....
— Mukesh Kwatra
Politics is not about divide the nation in the name of religion/cast but to the defend the country & represent it in international forums.
— Debasish Sinha
Politics is not about divide the nation in the name of religion/cast but to defend the country & represent it in international forums.
— Debasish Sinha
You sold out! We elected you, and you sold out! The next time we have an election, I think everyone should vote for himself. Or we might just as well vote for Charlie Brown! Yes, next year we may even say, 'You're elected, Charlie Brown!
— Charles M. Schulz, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown
That has to be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life.
— Charles M. Schulz, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown
Lucy's polls were sometimes kind of violent.
— Charles M. Schulz, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown
The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.
— Stewart Stafford
Even preschoolers have their own politics
— Mohammed Khambaty
At every age we play the same game, just by different rules.
— Mohammed Khambaty
A ghost who has only a lay knowledge of the subject will be able to keep asking the same questions as the lay reader, and will therefore open up the potential readership of the book to a much wider audience.
— Robert Harris
Jay was attacked with peculiar venom. Near his New York home, the walls of a building were defaced with the gigantic words, 'Damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t put up lights in the windows and sit up all night damning John Jay.
— Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
Is human dignity and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be traded away to appease the appetite for intimidation and prejudice of a vicious and self-centered group - for whatever reason, power, politics, nationalism, or unity?
— Christina Engela, Bugspray
I think this business of good vs. evil is of no interest to the power hungry
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
If you are my food, how am I supposed to feel pity towards you? That would mean starvation for me. “A hungry leopard told a fallen, panting, imploring gazelle
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
A peace that blacked yer eye,' I say. 'A peace that split yer lip.' He looks at me for another second and then gives a sad snort. “The words of a sage,” he says, “in the voice of a hick.
— Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer
It seems to me that wherever religion and politics mix in one body, fascist values - and not 'family values' - rear their ugly head.
— Christina Engela, Dead Man's Hammer
People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat's Cradle
If you 'don't do politics' , trust me - politics will do you.
— Christina Engela, Dead Man's Hammer
People need to get smart and understand that politics is a wrong bussiness for ugly people and those ugly people are "Politicians" so please do not trust politicians and do not have any faith in politic.
— Arash Tabish
My wife does not need the whole country to play politics with. We are only the two of us at home but she plays the highest form of politics with me. That’s why I don't understand her ways. I think I need to do a bit of political science to understand her
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
If you 'don't do politics', trust me - politics will do you.
— Christina Engela
His themes were not pride and love at all, though he used the words perpetually; as he used them they meant self-praise and hate. He talked a great deal about Truth also, for he was, he said, “cutting down beneath the veneer of civilization.”It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about veneer (or paint, or pliofilm, or whatever) hiding the nobler reality beneath. It can conceal a dozen fallacies at once. One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness… Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Most politicians lie for the same reason a monkey swings by his tail, which is to say because he can.
— Stephen King, The Dark Tower
The universe runs on the principle that one who can exert the most evil on other creatures runs the show.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
It was his first definite encounter with the wary-eyed, platitudinous, evasive Labour leaders, and he realised at once the formidable barrier ofinert leadership they constituted, between the discontented masses and constructive change. They seemed to be almost entirely preoccupied byinternecine intrigues and the "discipline of the Party". They were steeped in Party professionalism. They were not in any way traitors to their cause, or wilfully reactionary, but they had no minds for a renascent world. They meant nothing, but they did not know they meant nothing. They regarded Rud just as in their time they had regarded Liberalism, Fabianism, Communism, Science, suspecting them all, learning nothing from them, blankly resistant. They did not want ideas in politics. They just wanted to be the official representatives of organised labour and make what they could by it. Their manner betrayed their invincible resolution, as strong as an animal instinct, to play politics according to the rules, to manoeuvre for positions, to dig themselves into positions -- and squat...
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
He came away with an exasperated sense of failure. He denounced parliamentary government root and branch that night. Parliament was doomed. The fact that it had not listened to Rud was only one little conclusive fact in a long indictment. "It has become a series of empty forms," he said. "All over the world, always, the sawdust of reality is running out of the shapes of quasi-public things. Not one British citizen in a thousand watches what is done in Parliament; not one in a thousand Americans follows the discourses of Congress. Interest has gone. Every election in the past thirty years has been fought on gross misunderstandings.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
We have nothing to destroy," said Rud. "All these things are done for already. They are falling in all over the world. They are dead. No need for destructive activities. But if we have nothing to destroy we have much to clear away. That's different. What is needed is a brand-new common-sense reorganisation of the world's affairs, and that's what we have to give them. I can't imagine how the government sleeps of nights. I should lie awake at night listening all the time for the trickle of plaster that comes before a smash. Ever since they began blundering in the Near East and Spain, they've never done a single wise thing. This American adventure spells disaster. Plainly. Australia has protested already. India now is plainly in collapse. Everyone who has been there lately with open eyes speaks of the vague miasma of hatred in the streets. We don't get half the news from India. Just because there exists no clear idea whatever of a new India, it doesn't mean that the old isn't disintegrating. Things that are tumbling down, tumble down. They don'twait to be shown the plans of the new building. The East crumbles. All over the world it becomes unpleasant to be a foreigner, but an Englishman now can't walk in a bazaar without a policeman behind him...
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Public men in America are too public. Too accessible. This sitting on the stoop and being 'just folk' was all very well for local politics and the simple farmer days of a hundred years ago, but it's no good for world affairs. Opening flower-shows and being genial to babies and all that is out of date. These parish politics methods have to go. The ultimate leader ought to be distant, audible but far off. Show yourself and then vanish into a cloud. Marx would never have counted for one tenth of his weight as 'Charlie Marx' playing chess with the boys, and Woodrow Wilson threw away all his magic as far as Europe was concerned when he crossed the Atlantic. Before he crossed he was a god -- what a god he was! After he arrived he was just a grinning guest. I've got to be the Common Man, yes, but not common like that.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Life is politics, you do it or it does you
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
You English," said Steenhold."You Americans," said Rud."When you aren't as fresh as paint," he said, "you Americans are as stale as old cabbage leaves. I'm amazed at your Labour leaders, at the sort of things you can still take seriously as Presidential Candidates. These leonine reverberators tossing their manes back in order to keep their eyes on the White House -- they belong to the Pleistocene. We dropped that sort of head in England after John Bright. When the Revolution is over and I retire, I shall retire as Hitler did, to some remote hunting-lodge, and we'll have the heads of Great Labour Leaders and Presidential Hopes stuck all round the Hall. Hippopotami won't be in it.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
In politics what you see is not what you get
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Once you are in power, never forget those who put you there. Deal with those who think they can do better than you and those who think you are god's representative on earth. Deal with each other according to his actions
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Power hungry=life loving
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Politicians know it's a game of power, every politician at every level, even in the common of mortals.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
The Golden Mean is for the weakling, it was not meant for the likes of Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Pharaohs, or Hitlers of the world
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Nothing is sweeter and addictive than power, the unlucky soul this demon possesses, if he is not sacrificed on its altar will sacrifice others himself to get it
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
If anyone rises to power, it's not only because he could, but also because the stars were aligned in his favor. Many with apparent means to take it failed simply because they weren't destined for the honor
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
These politicians impressed him as being the most shortsighted and sceptical men he had ever met. They lived in a little world that was bounded on the one side by "office" and on the other by the constituencies, and they seemed unable to imagine that it was not an eternal world. One tall man, he observed, in the year of grace 1941 was wearing a long frock-coat and a peculiar half-stiff collar reminiscent of that great parliamentary hand, Mr. Gladstone. They talked with one another about divisions; the government majority had dropped to twenty; and they talked about a scene in the House. The P.M.'s manners were becoming intolerable. Then with an air of relaxation they turned to Rud. The possibility of altering opinions in the constituencies seemed a very theoretical one to them. No doubt there were these waves of opinion in the country, and an intelligent parliamentary politician observed them and dodged about among them, but it was quite outside their technique to consider how the pressures of opinion could accumulate and be directed.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Powerless=lifeless.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Can anyone maintain power without lying? It looks to me like living without breathing. Morality apart, I think some evils are part and parcel of nature and we cannot do without them. Sometimes evil is even necessary to run this evil nature.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician's life. He has to bow to the country's feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.
— Agatha Christie, Murder in the Mews
It's unfortunate to be bitten by political ambition. The deadly disease causes a man to want to access power by all means either by sacrificing others to its altar or by sacrificing himself when he fails.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. And now I was seeing the same thing with faith. It couldn't be about wrangling over the Bible to find justification for your convictions. Like politics, faith had to be about action.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
Though Argaven might be neither sane nor shrewd, he had had long practice in the evasions and challenges and rhetorical subtleties used in conversation by those whose main aim in life was the achievement and maintenance of the shifgrethor relationship on a high level.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
The masses who complain about bad leadership must first check their unbiased choices.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
To say that an Orgota government fell means, of course, only that one group of Commensals replaced another group of Commensals in the controlling offices of the Thirty-Three. Some shadows got shorter and some longer, as they say in Karhide.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Politics and justice seldom walk hand in hand.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
History is not coherent; moreover, the politics of coherence tend to drive history in the least tolerable directions.
— Joshua Clover, The Matrix
I will only ask you to believe one thing. I have faith in myself. I believe that I am the man to guide England through the days of crisis that I see coming. If I did not honestly believe that I am needed by my country to steer the ship of state, I would not have done what I have done--made the best of both worlds--saved myself from disaster by a clever trick.''My lord, if you could not make the best of both worlds, you could not be a politician.
— Agatha Christie, Murder in the Mews
Corrupt judicial practices in Russia, America, China, Great Britain, and other countries only vary by a single degree: the cost of services.
— Christopher Mart, In the Shreds of Reality: Nameless
I remember one time we were walking into a grocery store and an old man was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. I asked my dad if we could give him some money and he told me no, that he works hard for his money and he wasn’t about to let me give it away. He said it isn’t his fault that other people don’t want to work. He spent the whole time we were in the grocery store telling me about how people take advantage of the government and until the government stops helping those people by giving them handouts, the problem won’t ever go away… I believed him. That was three years ago and all this time I thought homeless people were homeless because they were lazy or drug addicts or just didn’t want to work like other people. But now I know that’s not true. Sure, some of what he said was true to an extent, but he was using the worst-case scenarios. Not everyone is homeless because they choose to be. They’re homeless because there isn’t enough help to go around. And people like my father are the problem. Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.
— Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us
Things were rather larger, more obvious and rougher on the American side, but the issues were essentially the same. The general public voted and demonstrated, but its voting seemed to lead to nothing. It felt that things were done behind its back and over its head but it could never understand clearly how. It never seemed able to get sound news out of its newspapers nor good faith out of its politicians. It resisted, it fumbled, it was becoming more and more suspicious and sceptical, but it was profoundly confused and ill-informed.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
They despite and hate the government more and more, but they don't know how to set about changing it. The country is dying for some sort of lead, and so far all it is getting is a crowd of fresh professional leaders. Who never get anywhere. Who do not seem to be aiming anywhere. We are living in a world of jaded politics. Poverty increases, prices rise, unemployment spreads, mines, factories stagnate, and nothing is done.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
It doesn't take ten years of study, you don't need to go to the University, to find out that this is a damned good world gone wrong. Gone wrong, because it is being monkeyed with by people too greedy and mean and wrong-hearted altogether to do the right thing by our common world. They've grabbed it and they won't let go. They might lose their importance; they might lose their pull. Everywhere it's the same. Beware of the men you make your masters. Beware of the men you trust.We've only got to be clear-headed to sing the same song and play the same game all over the world, we common men. We don't want Power monkeyed with, we don't want Work and Goods monkeyed with, and, above all, we don't want Money monkeyed with. That's the elements of politics everywhere. When these things go wrong, we go wrong. That's how people begin to feel it and see it in America. That's how we feel it here -- when we look into our minds. That's what common people feel everywhere. That'swhat our brother whites -- "poor whites" they call them -- in those towns in South Carolina are fighting for now. Fighting our battle. Why aren't we with them? We speak the same language; we share the same blood. Who has been keeping us apart from them for a hundred and fifty-odd years? Ruling classes. Politicians. Dear old flag and all that stuff!Our school-books never tell us a word about the American common man; and his school-books never tell him a word about us. They flutter flags between us to keep us apart. Split us up for a century and a half because of some fuss about taxing tea. And what are our wonderful Labour and Socialist and Communist leaders doing to change that? What are they doing to unite us English-speaking common men together and give us our plain desire? Are they doing anything more for us than the land barons and thefactory barons and the money barons? Not a bit of it! These labour leaders of to-day mean to be lords to-morrow. They are just a fresh set of dishonest trustees. Look at these twenty-odd platforms here! Mark their needless contradictions! Their marvellous differences on minor issues. 'Manoeuvres!' 'Intrigue.' 'Personalities.' 'Monkeying.' 'Don't trust him, trust me!' All of them at it. Mark how we common men are distracted, how we are set hunting first after one red herring and then after another, for the want of simple, honest interpretation...
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
The whole world," he said, "is going Radical again. Fundamentally. In religion. In politics. In law. The Common Man has been trying to get his Radicalism said and done plainly and clearly for a hundred and fifty years. Now we take it on. Our movement. The new wave of attack." "And fill a ditch in our turn," said Irwell. "Maybe we're over the last ditch," said Rud. "There must be a last ditch somewhere..."All other revolutionary movements have been experiments so far, Christianity, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and more or less failures. They were experiments in liberation and they did not liberate. The old things wriggled back. But ours may be the experiment that succeeds. We may get to the Common-sense World State. Yes -- we -- in this room...Why not? It has to come somehow, somewhen... If it doesn't come pretty soon, there won't be much of humanity left to liberate.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
We've got to escape from narrowness. We're a movement, not a conspiracy. We've got to radiate contacts, and have as many people aware of us as possible. That's living, modern common sense.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
If true Christianity consists in carrying out in our daily lives the teachings of Christ, who will say that we are commanded to civilize with dynamite and proselyte with the sword? ... Imperialism finds no warrant in the Bible. The command 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature' has no Gatling gun attachment.
— William Jennings Bryan
But nowadays -- Our weakness for the last few years has been the ineffectiveness of the Opposition. This Labour Party has never had the quality of a fighting Opposition. It has just sucked the life out of Radicalism. It has never had the definite idealism of the Whigs and Liberals. 'Give us more employment and slightly higher pay and be sure of our contentment,' says Labour. 'We're loyal. We know our place. But we don't like being unemployed.' What good is that as Opposition? It's about as much opposition as a mewing cat. We mean more than that. I tell you frankly. Our task, I take it, my task, is to reinstate that practical working Opposition which has always been Old England's alternative line of defence... For the good of all of us...
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Daddy, I don't like military parades. I never want to be like those people who march rank and file to music - they were given brains by mistake.
— Corinne Maier, Einstein
Look at the way people have swung through Communism, Toryism, Liberalism -- in vast blocks. In my father's boyhood you were either a Liberal or a Conservative in England, and there you stuck, and in America you were a sturdy individualist Democrat or Republican from the cradle to the grave. But now the Voice does it -- the pervading voice. And just nowit's come to a point when a Voice -- putting it straight and clear. Straight and clear...
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
Reconciliation without truth is nothing but a smokescreen
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
In addition, I had the greatest interest in anything connected with politics, but this did not seem to me very significant. On the contrary: in my eyes, this was the self-evident duty of every thinking man, Anyone who failed to understand this lost the right to any criticism or complaint
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The current political dispensation in the country takes pride in its affiliations with religion and culture. But unfortunately, they have become a corporate government more than a moral government. Religion to them does not mean the supremacy of moral, family and social values prescribed by religion, but hatred based on religious identity. If they can revisit their strategy, and take a bold stand against social vices, almost all the religious communities of the country, which means more than 95 pc of the people, will be standing behind them. But unfortunately, they stand for the rest 5 per cent.
— Javed Jamil, Muslim Vision of Secular India: Destination & Roadmap
Start with an honest analysis of why you are in opposition, not in government.
— Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever
Nothing can be changed in the system when the system itself is revolting against those who opposed violence.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
How can you cry for others’ struggles when you are facilitating mayhem in your own land?
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
A society is driven by “social fear” always produces the seeds of doubt and unhappiness.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The era of revolution by military means produced a greater degree of desperation and frustration. This was brought to an end by the people.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The most fundamental problem is not that we don’t have a system to run but those with knowledge are cynically manipulating the system for petty personal desires.
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
When the day to day life is suppressing you, how could you put your moral values and will power to the realm of life?
— Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth. Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster.
— Benjamin Barber
I personally believe in the power of second chances.
— Terry McAuliffe
The religious scholars I have consulted are passionate about the need for political leaders to educate themselves in the varieties of faith and to see religion more as a potential means for reconciliation than as a source of conflict.
— Madeleine Albright
I thought of you when I read this quote from "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace" by Brian Zahnd -"Jesus is introduced. (Standing ovation.) He stands before Congress and begins to deliver his speech. “Blessed are the poor …the mourners … the meek.” “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” After a few perfunctory applauses early on, I’m pretty sure there would be a lot of squirming senators and uncomfortable congressmen. The room would sink into a tense silence. And when Jesus concluded his speech with a prophecy of the inevitable fall of the house that would not act upon his words (Matt. 7:26–27), what would Congress do? Nothing. They would not act. They could not act. To act on Jesus’s words would undo their system. The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t work in Cain’s system—no matter how noble or sophisticated. In the end, the US Congress would no more adopt the policies Jesus set out in the Sermon on the Mount than they were adopted by the Jewish Sanhedrin or the Roman Senate.
— Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace
I have always said which politics is ugly, still i would like to tell let's have no faith in politics and don't trust politician. see what is going on in our world most important in our own country, can you really see? people are getting killed or losing their life for the false and wrong purposes of those ugly politician. i can expect more worse the situation then it is right now, and I am pretty sure I won't be disappointed. i wish our fellow humans specially our nation understand that we will never be able to build our country by making war everywhere, as i always said that with war we can not bulid our country, make our nation life better and bring a positive change in our society or our world. with war we only destroy our country, killing our fellow human beings and even destroying humanity inside of ourselves. Let's understand that we have a group of wrong and ugly people which we call them ( politician ). they are trying to do whatever they can and it take even the let lots of people to die for their own purpose to get what they want. they will never be able to bring peace by what they are busy doing so please come join me and let's say (No) to war and not only with words but we need to show it practically in our life , Let's not to pick up guns and refuse to go War. We need to have faith in God and follow the right path that he showed us. Let's spread love among human beings. Remember that if you keep having faith in politics and politician, i promise that you will see more difficult time and more worse then how it is now. Let's stop making excuses, having faith in God, asking him for help and following the right path that he showed us.
— Arash Tabish
The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time.
— Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Sometimes I fantasize about the US head of state as a super-lazy, super-moral libertarian despot and think, “That would certainly make everything easier,” even though I can’t think of one person who’d qualify, except maybe Willie Nelson.
— Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Voting for the Green Party is how you say 'Up Yours!' to the Republicans and Democrats.
— Steven Magee
Incidentally, I notice that our professors, trying to show off to their students, rant and rail against the state and against law and order, while expecting that same state to punctually pay their salaries, pensions, and family allowances, so that they value at least this kind of law and order. Make a fist with the left hand and open the right hand receptively—that is how one gets through life.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
Have you no sense of decency, sir?
— Joseph N. Welch
While the truth is putting on its shoes, the lie becomes a president!
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
All too often, our elegant political theories amount to nothing more than ideology triumphing over common sense.
— Clifford Cohen
...the Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leader in public, the Liberals naturally wanted to defeat him, and the newspapers were out to get him. It was a dreadful campaign on his part, for he lost his head, bullied his electors when he should have wooed them, and got into a wrangle with a large newspaper, which he threatened to sue for libel. He was defeated on election day so decisively that it was obviously a personal rather than a political rejection.
— Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
..."Were hostages ever killed?"She shook her head. "Not until the end. When everything...fell apart. "All it needs,",she said, memories clouding her mind, "is the breaking of one rule, one law. A breaking that then no one calls to account. Once that happens, once the shock passes, every law shatters. Every rule of conduct, of proper behaviour, it all vanishes. Then the hounds inside each and everyone of us is unleashed. At that moment Withal" - she met his eyes, defiant against the grief she saw in them - "we show our true selves. We are not beasts- we are something far worse. There deep inside us. You see it - the emptiness in the eyes, as horror upon horror is committed, and no one feels. No one feels a thing." --Steven Erikson... Dust of Dreams
— Steven Erikson, Dust of Dreams
Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will believe you
— Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000
Word of the day- kakistocracy. From the Greek meaning government by the worst persons, least qualified or most unprincipled.
— Peggy Noonan
Let's face the fact that most people believe what they like to believe or what they want to believe even if it is not real or it is not right things to blieve but they reject the reality and the right thing to believe. You know why cause most of them feel hurted by the truth, they are avoiding the truth instead they accept lie and unreal things. that is why i always mentioned that politics is just a wrong business for ugly people, unfortunately these ugly people are using our nation to reach for their goals, they can do anything to get what they want so let's be smart, be thoughtful and never believe in propaganda, never trust politicians even if you think that they are right cause most of them are not honest, let's remember that we are being led to slaughterhouse by Corrupt politicians, unfortunately most ordinary people is puppet of fake and worthless news and media and most media is the right hand for Anarchy. Let's be smart, be thoughtful and try do our best to avoid hate and anger but spread love, joy, peace, kindness and forbearance among our nation and our fellow human beings.
— Arash Tabish
In a democracy, of course, you always get a choice:Do you want to be governed by the red or by the blue? It's entirely up to you.Do you want to be patronized or condescended to by liars or by crooks? You get to choose.Would you prefer your fundamental values to be insulted or ignored by con men or by charlatans?In short, do you want your influence to be zero or nil?And when would you like to be listened to, never or not at all?It's your choice. Do you want some more choice?Take it or leave it. Now there's a real choice.
— Pat Condell, Freedom Is My Religion
All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
— Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thus the successful bid to gain access to marriage effectively strengthens marital status as a state-sanctioned condition for the exercise of certain kinds of rights and entitlements
—  it strengthens the hand of the state in the regulation of human sexual behavior
[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite.
— Paul Krugman
The division between politics and religion, I dare say, is an ideological ploy. Imagine an airport security metal detector standing at the entrance of the public square, which doesn't screen for metal for but for religion. The machine beeps anytime someone walks through it with a supernatural big-G God hiding inside of one of their convictions, but it fails to pick up self-manufactured or socially-constructed little-g gods. Into this public square the secularist, the materialist, the Darwinist, the consumerist, the elitist, the chauvinist, and, frankly, the fascist can all enter carrying their gods with them, like whittled wooden figures in their pockets. Not so the Christians or Jews. Their conviction that murder is wrong because all people are made in God's image might as well be a semi-automatic. What this means, of course, is that the public square is inevitably slanted toward the secularist and materialist. Public conversation is ideologically rigged. The secularist can bring his or her god. I cannot bring mine because his name starts with a capital letter and I didn't make him up.
— Jonathan Leeman, Political Church: The Local Assembly as Embassy of Christ's Rule
There has never been a more important time to vote for the Green Party!
— Steven Magee
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee...
— Helen Keller
At that level through out the 18th century, another vision of admirable behavior persisted. The mob did not want the smooth conformable man, the slick hypocrite who could so politely maneuver his way into the rewards of high politics and high society. They wanted his very opposite, the clever thief. The man who thrived not by using the well oiled wheels of society but by opposing them and cheating them; by attending to the well-being of his own heroic self.
— Adam Nicolson, Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar
In most gardens they make the beds too soft – so that the flowers are always asleep.
— Lewis Carroll
I live, I am partisan. This is why I hate those who do not take sides; I hate those who are indifferent
— Antonio Gramsci
Like the far-right that they claim to be so staunchly opposed to, the far-left is based entirely around hate....not only is she a white person who isn’t self-flagellating, but she’s also a woman who doesn’t see herself as a victim of some evil patriarchal conspiracy. To an SJW, that’s heresy: all white people are evil and all women are victims. If a woman doesn’t think that she’s a victim, then she has “internalized misogyny” and she just doesn’t know any better, so she needs SJWs to speak on her behalf. Likewise, if a black person doesn’t tow the SJW line exactly, then they will be immediately labeled an “Uncle Tom” or “house nigger” by the extremely patronizing SJWs who see minorities as nothing more than political props and tools and who view all races as monoliths with intrinsic characteristics .
— Joshua Goldberg
You follow voice of masses, Possibly you suppress your inner voice.
— Bikash Bhandari
There are other ways to beat someone than with fists.
— Kiersten White, And I Darken
Americans need to continue to develop broad-based movements that reject the established political parties and rethink the social formations necessary to bring about a radical democracy. We see this in the Black Lives Matter movement as well as in a range of other movements that are resisting corporate money in politics, the widespread destruction of the environment, nuclear war and the mass incarceration state.
— Henry A. Giroux, America at War with Itself: Authoritarian Politics in a Free Society