c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Don’t be timid. You’re a writer, use your role, test it, make something of it. These are decisive times, everything is turning upside down. Participate, be present. And begin with the scum in your area, put their backs to the wall.
— Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
If this were a courageous country,it would ask Gloria to lead itsince she is sane and funny and beautiful and smartand the National Leaders we've always hadare not.When I listen to her talk about women's rightschildren's rightsmen's rightsI think of the long line of Americans who should have been president, but weren't.Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.Imagine President Martin Luther King confrontingthe youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine PresidentMalcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President StevieWonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, orSweet Honey in the Rockdealing with Anything.It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,as we languish under real estate dealers, killers, and bad actors.
— Alice Walker, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful: Poems
What we call isolation in the political sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse.Isolation and loneliness are not the same"...."While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities.But totalitarian domination as a form of government is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. it bases its self on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is the most radical and desperate experiences of man
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
He was not interested in what they were doing, not any of it— it was both ugly and abstract, a continuous manipulation of people devoid of any of the tangible rewards that so much work had. That’s politics....
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars
The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History.
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars
I know that the theory of evolution is true
—  Pigs evolved into politicians
Then Brezhnev grabbed the wheel of power and captained the country with the exploratory heart of a municipal bus driver.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
As the campaign progressed, Armistead remembered what his parents had taught him: If you never tell a lie, you won't have to remember what you said.He subsequently developed a perverse respect for politicians who had mastered the art of spin. It was a skill to produce an answer having nothing to do with the question.He didn't think he was crafty enough to do it.
— Rodney Page, Powers Not Delegated
The brontosaurus had thirty-ton body and a two-ounce brain. The anatosaurus had two thousand teeth. Triceratops had a helmet of filled bone seven feet long. Tyrannosaurus rex had tiny arms and teeth like six-inch razors and it was elected President. It ate everything—dead meat, living meat, old bones—
— John Updike, The Centaur
The tragedy waiting for politicians in future is greater than the gain in politics if it is measured, politicians kill, steal and betray the voters, but at the end they go to early grave, lose their peace and become miserable for the rest of their life.
— Bamigboye Olurotimi
Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was as bad as the one into which she had been born. "An exercise in futility," she murmured.
— Gary Inbinder, The Hanged Man: A Mystery in Fin de Siecle Paris
Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.I hate reasoning, John,—especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
it is important to stress that history is always constructed, not absolute or unchallangeable. Histories are stories about the past, and reconstructing the past ill involve elements of mythologising from the cultural, political and theoretical stances of both the historian and the informants.
— John O'Toole
I served our country in its military for a total of 40 years 6 months and 7 days. At a time when we have fake news and people have accepted that lies are as valid as the truth all I can say is that my DD-214 shows that I served and retired from the United States Naval Reserve, before joining the United States Army in its Military Intelligence Corps, and served as such until retiring in 1987. I personally don’t know of anyone else that actually served in two branches of our military and retired from each, and although I frequently receive thanks for my service it is appreciated but not necessary. What is however necessary, is that we as citizens give a long hard look at where we are going as a nation. Yes, our infrastructure needs repair and our people need good jobs. We certainly want to feel secure but we definitely don’t need one man to fix our Constitution, which by the way is not broken! We do not need a crude iron fist to run our country! What we do need is a clear understanding of where we are going and what our country stands for…. “The pursuit of happiness” for “We the People!” Our government is based on a system of checks and balances, not the blind following of an autocrat. That’s been tried before and failed each time. Let’s not go down that “Rabbit hole!” Stand up and protect our democracy and cherish our freedom! What we have is priceless! Don’t let anyone take that away from us…. “Stand up for what is right!
— Hank Bracker
Not long ago Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed this law are responsible, by acts of commission or omission, for burning, polluting, and plundering the territory that the flag is supposed to represent. Therein, they exemplified the peculiar andperhaps fatal fallacy of civilization: the confusion of symbol with reality.
— Alan W. Watts, Does It Matter?
We need not be surprised at this. On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out to the end.
— Frédéric Bastiat, That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen
Making a wrong choice in the leadership would be the end of mankind when run by the immature contestants, but from the divine’s glory it is to verify if the mankind is really serious of keeping the planet earth by apprising and enhancing the consciousness.
— Vishal Chipkar, Enter Heaven
Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.
— Donald J. Trump
Electing a bigot enables further bigotry.
— DaShanne Stokes
No president likes leaks, but it’s worth noting candidate Trump’s path to power was tread on a road of leaks. He didn’t have a problem with leaks then. It’s not a moral position if you only hold it when it applies to you.
— Jake Tapper
The danger we face does not come from religion. It comes from a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is one of the symptoms of a dying culture. In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population’s attention was diverted by a series of frontier wars and violent and elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome’s emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a form in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not prerogative of the citizen to think.
— Chris Hedges, I Don't Believe in Atheists
He is fiddling while Rome is burning, and, unlike the enormous majority of people who do this, fiddling with his face toward the flames.
— George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays
Chaos brings movement to whatever is stagnant in your life. Stagnation leads to apathy, numbness, illness, suffering, etc. Be grateful for the situations in your life that may seem chaotic in the present moment, and realize that, in the greater scheme of things, chaos is Spirit giving you an opportunity… or possibly pushing you to move, grow, and be in the flow.
— Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace
Denying the popular vote is un-American and anti-democratic.
— DaShanne Stokes
I have heard that all ideas of equality are visionary—that they can never be realized—and I believe it. But surely, though there must be hewers of wood, and drawers of water, they ought to have the absolute necessaries of life.
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Marchmont
I've fought for religious freedom and I can tell you that anti-gay 'religious freedom' bills aren't it.
— DaShanne Stokes
Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the drama—that time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossible to bring forward events without touching on their causes; and that any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expence of thought.
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Marchmont
I wish all those involved in the Wikileaks matter in the spirit of truth (rather than as a cheap opportunity to screw with a .gov they dislike) the very best. I hope that they'll bear in mind that truth is not some pure thing that brings light and scatters rose petals wherever it goes. It can hurt people that don't deserve to be hurt. It has thorns. Treat it gently. (From an open letter.)
— Adrián Lamo
The future shouldn't be female or male---but one of women and men working together. That's the real definition of equality.
— Karin Agness
Public disinterest in punishing illegal vote buying means that local prosecutors rarely pursue charges against their fellow elected colleagues....Yet the inclination no matter how small, to blame the most vulnerable citizens for fraud is misdirected.....Any outrage over fraud should be reserved for the candidates who buy their votes, neglect the issues that concern the poor, and studiously refuse to implement policies that could help them.
— Mary Frances Berry, Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy
They say I am a reformer. They say wrong: for I have long since given up any such chimerical idea, as that of being able to make men happier who are wicked and miserable by prescription. Withdrawing, therefore, from any such Utopian and hopeless attempt, I believed the best thing I could do was, to relieve, where I could, individual distress, and to lighten the chains that villany often imposes on simplicity under the name of law. In this I have done some good, and what else ought a man to do on this earth?
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Marchmont
Today's 'religious freedom' policies should not be seen as a problem limited to LGBT people but as a co-optation of religion that affects us all.
— DaShanne Stokes
...The coarse rhetoric and reduction of women to violently empty reproductive organs isn't a great way to argue against Trump's vulgarity. The unhinged rhetoric, violent anti-speech street protests,and hysteria currently on display don't make Trump look like he's a unique threat.
— Mollie Hemingway
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
— George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays
In nepotism, when a doctor is appointed to do the job of an engineer, and an engineer is appointed to do the job of a lawyer, you know there’s bound to be failure in the system
— ETC Wanyanwu
Politics nowadays is a game unlike every other game, only for the willing hearts and strong minds
— ETC Wanyanwu
Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I began to realize that maybe my opinions just didn’t fit in with the liberal status quo, which seems to mean that you must absolutely hate Trump, his supporters and everything they believe. If you dare not to protest or boycott Trump, you are a traitor.If you dare to question liberal stances or make an effort toward understanding why conservatives think the way they do, you are a traitor. It can seem like liberals are actually against free speech if it fails to conform with the way they think. And I don’t want to be a part of that club anymore.
— Chadwick Moore
Having the understanding of God, God’s ambassadors are able to bring a country out of crisis, change politics, business and economy
— Sunday Adelaja
He that walks into the political marsh cannot come out with polished boots.
— J. Norville Clarke
People like bipartisanship not because they like the substance of what bipartisanship produces, but because it reduces the cognitive stress that partisan disagreement creates. If two sides are bitterly arguing over some major piece of public policy, this forces us to choose sides, and for those with weak mastery of the issue or tenuous connections to a specific worldview, it is easy to be stalked by the worry that you’re choosing the wrong side: After all, there are a ton of people screaming in righteous indignation that the side you’re on is about to destroy the country.
— Chris Hayes
If the caged birds think whoever scattering grains for them that person is their deity,what should we Kurds call the person who will grantee us an independence.
— Davan Yahya Khalil
Activists have not been passive. For decades, we have tried every tactic to shift the course of our governments. We have voted, written editorials and manifestos, donated money, held signs, protests in marches, blocked streets, shared links, signed petitions, held workshops, knitted scarves, learn to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed vandalism, launched legal challenges against pipelines . . . and occupied the financial districts. All this has been for naught. A new approach to activism and a new kind of protest are desperately needed.
— Micah White, The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution
Iraq is a fabricated state that has failed. It has always been a failure. It exists on the map. On the map, it has some borders, but these borders weren’t drawn naturally.
— Masrour Barzani
Liars are highly unlikely to admit their lies, never mind apologize for the hurt they’ve caused. Liars don’t genuinely apologize. Deceit has become their full-out lifestyle. They are centered on themselves with no thoughts of the consequences of their lies. In cowardly style, they tell more lies to try and cover their tracks. They are not good at admitting they actually have shortcomings.
— Cathy Burnham Martin, The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
Leaders who do not help the people must be replaced by the people.
— DaShanne Stokes
We elected a man who knows how to build walls when we needed someone who knows how to build bridges.
— DaShanne Stokes
It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the commonwealth, for the same reasons as you should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road, when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present hope to see.
— Thomas More, Utopia
They were endowed with the qualities of youth- they were rebellious, fearless, eager to fight for a 'just cause', thirsty for adventure and action. They were also irresponsible, ignorant, and easy to manipulate- and prone to violence. Only they could give Mao the immense force that he needed to terrorize the society.
— Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.
— Phil Ochs
But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate. They twist away our freedom, and they twist away our fate. Fear is their weapon, and treason is their cry. We can stop them if we try.
— Phil Ochs
That day -- Monday, 25 February 1980 -- unfolded, in the context of British politics, much like any other day. Government, in those days, happened rather like a tree falling in a forest when there was no one there to witness it. For those among the Great British Public who wanted to believe that something was happening, the assumption was that something was indeed most probably happening, while for those who still needed to see it, or hear it, to believe it, there remained a high degree of doubt that anything was happening at all.
— Graham McCann, A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister
I went on to explain that it is an honour, and also that we need a transport policy."If by 'we' you mean Britain, that's perfectly true," he acknowledged. "But if by 'we' you mean you and me and this Department, we need a transport policy like an aperture in the cranial cavity.
— Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, The Complete Yes Minister
They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women. They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.
— George Carlin
In other words, the Bannonite belief in disruption as an end in itself renders impossible any self-scrutiny or acknowledgment of error, in a kind of endless feedback loop (the consequences of which could become much more dire over time). And it is precisely the Bannonite contempt for procedural and institutional knowledge that is partly responsible for creating all of the logistical and legal problems to begin with.
— Greg Sargent
The United Staes had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred,
— Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
I can only imagine that future generations will consider us to have been barbaric for our intolerance of differences.
— Cathy Burnham Martin, The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
The goal of radicalism is to improve the human condition, not to prove one's own moral superiority.
— Jack Newfield, A Prophetic Minority: A Probing Study of the Origins and Development of the New Left
Resistance is NOT futile.
— Jay Inslee
...the opportunity for overthrowing capitalism has passed – Labor governments are the hope of the world.” From that time his commitment to the ALP was unquestioned.
— Mungo MacCallum, The Good, the Bad & the Unlikely, Australia's Prime Ministers
The Left has failed to understand the extent to which its intolerant, often coercive, approach to issues that permit good-willed disagreement has turned off voters who might otherwise be sympathetic to their general program.
— Ian Tuttle
The Left had to go searching for a new civil-rights struggle with which to cram conservatives back into their “victimizer” cubbyhole. The Left now pushes against civil rights in its ignorant search for the new struggle. There was, however, one problem: All the good civil-rights issues have been dealt with already. And so the Left, which focuses all of its efforts on social issues, was relegated to pushing crime-increasing myths about the evils of cops; the celebrities were forced to pretend that men peeing next to women was the next great Martin Luther King, Jr.–style struggle.
— Ben Shapiro
But perhaps his outstanding contribution to Australian politics was that, after a lifetime of switching sides, he put in place the basic two-party structure we have today: Labor versus anti-Labor. The anti-Labor parties have had many names, but always the same policy: to keep Labor out of office.
— Mungo MacCallum
They [left-wingers] willy-nilly throw around the accusation of Nazism and comparisons to Hitler whenever confronted by any opposition, yet they are today's Nazis in their determination to shut down by threats or violence free speech and assembly.
— Steve McCann
Because we are so focused on the real world, we keep forgetting how fantasy-driven the Left really is....As with orthodox Marxists, the left adamantly believes it is "Progressive", implying that its adherents know the inevitable and virtuous outcome of history. In the Soviet Union the Party truly believed every five years that Stalin's commands to fix agriculture were bound to work....Lenin and Stalin killed tens of millions of "rich peasants" without ever learning how to feed their country.
— James Lewis
So if black power means black armies racing through the streets, creating havoc, that certainly does nothing to advance the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the black community. Just the opposite, in fact....If they think a few Molotov cocktails are going to bring down the whole system and build something new, I'm afraid they're just indulging in wishful-thinking,
— Truman Capote, Truman Capote: Conversations
Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.
— Naomi Shulman
The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead.
— Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
— Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
It is obvious that politics would gain much in prestige if the money-raising campaign were conducted candidly and publicly, like the campaigns for the war funds. Charity drives might be made excellent models for political funds drives. The elimination of the little black bag element in politics would raise the entire prestige of politics in America, and the public interest would be infinitely greater if the actual participation occurred earlier and more constructively in the campaign.
— Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
The [women's] march was pointless, classless, and brainless, but not harmless. One common theme was anger at certain crass comments Trump made in the past. To combat this, the march’s leaders and their lemmings decided to be crude, lewd, and even more crass in the present. It’s much like trying to correct your child’s cursing by cursing him out.
— Selwyn Duke
He looked like an excited sixteen-year-old with his tousled hair and shining eyes. Barbara could not deny she liked him, even though every word he said was repellent to her. With an eloquence that frequently tied itself in knots but was of an unflagging vehemence he explained to her that the faith for which he was fighting was basically revolutionary. 'When the day arrives and our Führer takes over supreme power, then that's the end of capitalism and the economy of the big bosses. The servitude of usury will be abolished. Big banks and stock exchanges that bleed our national economy white can close their doors, and no one will mourn them".Barbara wanted to know why Miklas did not join the Communists if he, like them, was against capitalism. Miklas explained as eagerly as a child reciting a lesson learned by heart. "because the Communists have no patriotism for the fatherland, but are supranational and dependent on Russian Jews. AndCommunists don't know anything about idealism-all Marxists believe that the only purpose in life is money. We want our own revolution-our German, idealistic revolution. Not one that will be directed by Freemasons and the Elders of Zion.
— Klaus Mann, Mephisto
Democratic government needs parties
—  parties do not need democracy.
Even now, years later, it's hard to tell why the government stood by and let the city of New Orleans be destroyed, dispatching troops rather than help.
— Ted Rall, The Anti-American Manifesto
I might, indeed, read history; but whenever I attempt to do so, I am to tell you the truth, driven from it by disgust—What is it, but a miserably mortifying detail of crimes and follies?—of the guilt of a few, and the sufferings of many, while almost every page offers an argument in favor of what I never will believe—that heaven created the human race only to destroy itself.
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Desmond
When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be good, but what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation.
— William J. Clinton
It did, in Scandinavia. When I first became prime minister 15 years ago, it was a cultural shock to many Norwegians. Today, four- year-olds ask their mommies: "but can a man be prime minister?" -Fourth World Conference on Women
— Gro Haarlem Brundtland
If truth is not to be spoken, Sir, in a government, calling itself free, least it should be understood by the people, who are governed; and prevent their freely supplying the oil, that facilitates the movement of the cumbrous machine—If facts, which cannot be denied, be repressed; and reason, which cannot be controverted, be stifled; the time is not far distant, when such a country may say, adieu liberty!
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Desmond
We have no business squatting on other people’s land and we have only ourselves to blame if they take a dim view of it. I mean, c’mon, what would you do if someone barged into our house and just took it over? How would you react? Are you going to say, welcome, intruders, take it all, we’ll gladly confine ourselves to the bathroom. That is, until you want us out of the bathroom as well. Then we will happily kill ourselves and leave you to deal with our bodies as you please. Is that what you would say? Of course not. You would make a complete ruckus. So why are you surprised when other people do the same?
— Sonal Panse, The Sunshine Time: Season 1 Episode 5
Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise for them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds.
— Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy
I think that our form of government is certainly the best—not that can be imagined—but that has ever been experienced; and, while we are sure that practice is in its favour, it would be most absurd to dream of destroying it on theory.
— Charlotte Turner Smith, Desmond
He shortly found himself arrived at politics
—  and from politics it was an easy step to silence.
I'm beginning to wonder when the Doomsday Clock will be reset to five minutes before 1939?
— Chris Penningroth
We are not against the evil when our enemies are.
— M.F. Moonzajer, The Journalist: Attack on the Central Intelligence Agency
There is an understandable aversion to risk, and a reluctance to plan too far ahead: the modern electorate wants instant gratification and simplistic, populist solutions.
— Mungo MacCallum, The Good, the Bad & the Unlikely, Australia's Prime Ministers
Gough was a serious student but found time to gain a blue in rowing
—  he was later to say that the sport was an apt one for men in public life because you could face one way while going in the other.
The family was serious about education; after dinner, Fred was known to issue volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to his children and guests for a little light reading.
— Mungo MacCallum, The Good, the Bad & the Unlikely, Australia's Prime Ministers
Reminded that the Commonwealth was already involved in pre-school and university education, Chifley replied: “That’s different – they’re for kids before they’ve got souls and after they’ve lost them.
— Mungo MacCallum, The Good, the Bad & the Unlikely, Australia's Prime Ministers
Bigotry against any group should be disqualifying for high office.
— Alan Dershowitz
Do not wait for a coronation
—  the greatest emperors crown themselves.
This would be the last moment of the primary during which I felt as though I inhabited a different planet than everyone else in my party, that I had heard a different speech, seen a different person, been in a different room than everyone else. But I can't say that I was unhappy that they had heard what they did. If they thought Hillary was telling them to fuck off, that was okay with me. For just one last day, before I joined their ranks, I wanted them to fuck off too.
— Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
— Why did blondes vote for Clinton? — They didn't know how to read and thought she can make their life hilarious!
— Bryanna Reid
Great leaders lead by example, not by making an example of others.
— Stewart Stafford
There's a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from New York. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues over an issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument, blurted out: 'Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, I'm entitled to my own opinion." To which Moynihan frostily replied, "You are entitled to you own opinion, but you are not entitled to you own facts.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
But it does not require much effort to see that the dialogue in liberal democracy is of a peculiar kind because its aim is to maintain the domination of the mainstream and not to undermine it. A deliberation is believed to make sense only if the mainstream orthodoxy is sure to win politically. Today's 'dialogue' politics are a pure form of the right-is-might politics, cleverly concealed by the ostentatiously vacuous rhetoric of all-inclusiveness.
— Ryszard Legutko, Triumf człowieka pospolitego
In video games, one of the most helpless against injustice can even mighty.
— Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
Far too many Americans formulate their own personal expert opinions based on the Golden Rule and the Eight-second Soundbyte.
— Chris Penningroth
The commandment was to ‘Love thy neighbor,’ not ‘Love thy government.
— Chris Penningroth
Humphrey Well, Prime Minister … one hesitates to say this but there are times when circumstances conspire to create an inauspicious concatenation of events that necessitate a metamorphosis, as it were, of the situation such that what happened in the first instance to be of primary import fraught with hazard and menace can be relegated to a secondary or indeed tertiary position while a new and hitherto unforeseen or unappreciated element can and indeed should be introduced to support and supersede those prior concerns not by confronting them but by subordinating them to the over-arching imperatives and increased urgency of the previously unrealised predicament which may in fact now, ceteris paribus, only be susceptible to radical and remedial action such that you might feel forced to consider the currently intractable position in which you find yourself.  	Jim is nonplussed.  	Jim What does he mean, Bernard?  	Bernard I, um – I, er, think that he’s perhaps suggesting the possibility that you, um, consider your position. Resign, in fact, Prime Minister.
— Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, Yes Prime Minister: A Play
On January 17, 1991 and for the 43 days that followed, I watched CNN’s live coverage of SCUD missiles and bombs fall over Baghdad like rain; then the 12 ½ years of unjust sanctions that killed approximately a million Iraqis, half of which were children under the age of five; then an unjust attack in 2003 that opened the borders to terrorists from all over the world and reduced the cradle of civilization to piles of rubble. The gov. asked us to support their plan or else be considered anti-American and undemocratic and they ask of us the same today, 25 years later, even though history proved they were pro-profit not pro-life.
— Weam Namou, The Great American Family
Jim Is there no other way?  	Claire We could just say no to him.  	Jim Can’t risk that. Collapse of conference, collapse of backbench support, collapse of Cabinet. Collapse of my career. The biggest disaster since Dunkirk.  	Humphrey I think not, Prime Minister.  	Jim Name a bigger one.  	Humphrey The Freedom of Information Act.
— Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, Yes Prime Minister: A Play
Humphrey Not another czar, please, Prime Minister. In the last three years we’ve appointed an Enterprise Czar, a Youth-Crime Czar, a Welfare Supremo, a Pre-School Supremo, an Unemployment Watchdog, a Banking Regulator, a Science and Technology Supremo and a Community Policing Czar. If you go on like this you won’t need a Cabinet.  	Jim Perfect!  	Humphrey Perfect? Prime Minister, we even have a Twitter Czar!  	Bernard His appointment was announced as a Tweet.  	Humphrey What’s he supposed to achieve?  	Jim The same as the others: at least twelve column inches in every paper.
— Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, Yes Prime Minister: A Play
For in the end laws are just words on a page - words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
One part braggart to one part coward. He would fear everyone he did not control. And the next day he would fear those he controlled even more.
— Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin
The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns.
— Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker
But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn’t matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America’s strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect.
— Barack Obama
Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be.
— George Orwell, 1984
Immeasurably, baby. I love you immeasurably.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
I think she is marvelous. She is untouched by politics, unmarred and untainted. She is absolutely, brilliantly humble. Honest, hardworking. And it would be my honor that she accept to be my wife. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a country to govern and a woman to woo.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.
— George Orwell
I want to marry this girl. I want to marry her now.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
He’s the president now, but he’s still Matt. My first crush, my first love. And I know that after Matt, I’ll never want or love another man again.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right.I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
I am in love with the first lady of the United States. At the moment, a dozen vans from District florists are pulling up at the White House, and the staffers are helping me fill up her room. I’m going to ask her to marry me. Today.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
Politicians are interested in the health of the people like predators savor live prey.
— A.E. Samaan
She is the one relentless, constant thought in my head and tug in my damn chest. The only she that has ever existed in my life.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
Policemen always call me a stupid bitch, and I deny that I'm stupid.
— Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, The Price of my Soul
Being political doesn’t only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election
—  to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States . . .
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
You’re . . . their absolute fantasy. Of course I’m jealous. You’re their fantasy and mine.
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
You once said you might not mind being by the president’s side,” he says. My libido goes crazy under that smile. His words husky, seducing me. The proximity of his mouth to my earlobe making my heart go haywire.“That was before,” I whisper worriedly.He captures my gaze with his powerful one. “Before you fell in love with me, or after?
— Katy Evans, Commander in Chief
The French political class has been relentlessly myopic, if not completely blind, about the concerns of those who work and mine and farm. .... To cite Eugene Weber, "One thing that we learn from history is that people seldom learn from history.
— Ronald Rosbottom
LIZZ WINSTEAD Instead of Jon playing a character—the news anchor, one of the derelicts in a derelict world of media—Jon made a creative decision to take the show in the direction of the correspondents presenting the idiocy, and then Jon is the person who calls out the idiocy with the eloquence that the viewer wishes they had. And he did it in a way that’s not condescending, it’s not smug. It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s calling out bullshit. So Jon became the voice of the audience.
— Chris Smith, The Daily Show: An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests
I'm going to set up a Commission of Inquiry," said the Sow. "What's that?" asked Lorina."It's a way of putting things off, said the Sow, "in the hope that the problem will go away.
— David Henry Wilson, The Castle of Inside Out
There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people. The presidency of Barack Obama is no different. One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small. One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can’t, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls. The gate is open and yet so very far away.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.
— Theodore Roosevelt
If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be a new party of nationwide and non-sectional principles, a party where the titular national chiefs and the real state leaders shall be in genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the people shall be supreme, a party that shall represent in the nation and the several states alike the same cause, the cause of human rights and of governmental efficiency. At present both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes, and apparently each has set up as its ideal of business and political development a government by financial despotism tempered by make-believe political assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, they represent government of the needy many by professional politicians in the interests of the rich few. This is class government, and class government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind.
— Theodore Roosevelt
A notable politician once said that it takes a village to raise a child. She forgot that it takes a family to raise a village. And the destruction of the family, largely due to policies and movements that she supports, has razed the village to the ground.
— Eric Robert Morse, The Economic Theory of Sex: Industrialism, Feminism, and the Disintegration of the Family
One Saturday morning last May, I joined the presidential motorcade as it slipped out of the southern gate of the White House. A mostly white crowd had assembled. As the motorcade drove by, people cheered, held up their smartphones to record the procession, and waved American flags. To be within feet of the president seemed like the thrill of their lives. I was astounded. An old euphoria, which I could not immediately place, gathered up in me. And then I remembered, it was what I felt through much of 2008, as I watched Barack Obama’s star shoot across the political sky. I had never seen so many white people cheer on a black man who was neither an athlete nor an entertainer. And it seemed that they loved him for this, and I thought in those days, which now feel so long ago, that they might then love me, too, and love my wife, and love my child, and love us all in the manner that the God they so fervently cited had commanded.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
Politics is a slippery ground
—  they that wish to walk on this ground must walk with due care and courage!
Politics is a mirror with an untamed tongue
—  they that wish to walk in front of it must be mindful this!
Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing “mere” about symbols.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them.Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
A psychiatrist on the Baader-Meinhof gang: „They seek salvation in a paranoia that blinds them to reality, because they believe everything that surrounds them is an evil machination”. On this point they are not blind. Man cannot, however, look upon the underlying evil and thus cannot escape the punishment of total blindness and corruption meted out to all except inspired seers, and especially those athletes who have overcome evil and been immunized before approaching the vision. For Arjuna the sight of God in his terrifying aspect is cathartic; he remains a warrior and a righteous man. For a Baader, a glimpse behind the veil produces mental upheaval.
— Ceronetti
And to all the young people in particular, I hope you will hear this. I have, as Tim said, spent my entire adult life fighting for what I believe in. I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks. Sometimes, really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional public and political careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too. This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is. It is worth it. And so we need, we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. And to all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion. Now, I, I know, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. And, and to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog.
— Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life