Best 5810 quotes in «politics quotes» category

After eighteen long months covering this dreary business, the whole campaign appears in my mind’s eye as one long, protracted scratch-fight over Internet-fueled nonsense.

After hovering in the ethereal world of mathematics and geometry, economics was forced to crash-land and take its place in the real world of political debate. Do economists wish to pursue the Good Society in the spirit of the social contract tradition which started some time in ancient Greece, reasserted itself in Europe with J.-J.Rousseau and found its apotheosis in John Rawls? Or do they wish for a social contract which effectively rules the State out as anything other than a provider of order and security—a tradition which began with Thomas Hobbes and culminated in Robert Nozick’s theory? Or, indeed can economists think of something in between? Thus economics is back into the mire courtesy of Arrow’s third theorem, which dispels any hopes of a Rational Society springing from some form of advanced utility maximisation. Economics can no longer escape the political, philosophical debates which resonate across the humanities—from literature to sociology and from politics to moral philosophy. This is a good thing. At last, economics can become interesting again after a century of continuous pedantry.

After seven days of fasten so it was, that the thoughts of my heart were very grievous unto me- and my soul recovered the spirit of understanding.

After the elections, voters are never given an applause.

After twelve centuries, a little hope had come into the world - and then came an illiterate prince to ride roughshod over it with a barbarian horde and...

Again, a Prince should show himself a patron of merit, and should honour those who excel in every art. He ought accordingly to encourage his subjects by enabling them to pursue their callings, whether mercantile, agricultural, or any other, in security, so that this man shall not be deterred from beautifying his possessions from the apprehension that they may be taken from him, or that other refrain from opening a trade through fear of taxes; and he should provide rewards for those who desire so to employ themselves, and for all who are disposed in any way to add to the greatness of his City or State.

A further reason for my hatred of . . . ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one's power, optimally by killing somebody—a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost. . . . A good example of the type of self that has to kill other people in order to regain in an Ersatzform what it has lost is the famous Saint-Juste, who says that Brutus either has to kill other people or kill himself. . . . . I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as "murderous swine.

A fucking gorilla was murdered in a zoo last month and you’re telling me to have faith in our country?

A full loyalty to the leader merely fits to the dogs, not to the humans!

a generalized anxiety about the long-term viability of the social, economic and political foundation of the island-nation has been transformed into a set of ideological justifications for and instrumental practices of tight social and political control, which taken together constitutes the authoritarianism of the regime.

A global awakening can not happen. We all live in different time zones.

A good follower is better than a bad leader.

A good businessman knows how to make a profit. An engineer makes sure it runs well. We need more leaders who are task oriented.

A Government can create nothing. It cannot by any exercise of its powers, by legislative enactment, or judicial decree, or executive command, cause two blades of grass to grow where one grew before....It cannot command a tree to fall in the forest, and divide itself into planks and boards, from which chairs and tables may be made. All these results can be accomplished only by the labor of human hands.

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity.

A government that kills its own citizens is like a parent that kills their own kids aka filicide or like a mother that kills her unborn by abortion .

a great reason why a gloomy history may repeat itself is that we may have neglected what history did. When we neglect what history did, history visits us in the same cloth

A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

... a great many people were entranced by Obama’s platitudes. Giving speeches, it turned out, was the only thing he was good at. But those speeches made him president. --- National Review, April 4, 2019

A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don't drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground — but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well.

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Agriculture, however, is not and never has been a single monolithic interest in our society. We have always known differences among farmers of different regions, different crops, and different incomes. The difference in the forms of political organization have been determined principally by the manner in which economic differences have been resolved. (pp. 15–16)

...a guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.

Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us?

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.

a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really it was just the hole that's in the middle of all bagels; 'i need to go read my blog to find out what my politics are

Ainsi donc, en s’alliant à un pouvoir politique, la religion augmente sa puissance sur quelques-uns, et perd l’espérance de régner sur tous.

A job should be given to those who deserve it, not those who demand it.

A large segment of the public willingly resigns itself to political passivity in a world in which it cannot expect to make well-founded judgments.

A leadership comfort zone brings stagnancy, deprives one of innovation, stifles growth and frustrates both the leader and the team they lead. Your personal preferences like leadership style, communication style, prejudices, habits and mannerisms must be effectively managed so that they do not work against you. You have to be careful that your strengths do not end up becoming a hindering comfort zone. Seek to lead, driven by a cause.

A leader must be responsible for his people not his personal interest.

A leader, who divides his own people, contaminates his platform and begins to destroy his own territory.

A leader must, not should, but must, act as a liberated human being, a being beyond labels in order to bring real harmonious progress in a nation.

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism. He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment. This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life.

A leader must produce other leaders. Why do you want to produce followers, when by being called a leader the assumption is that you already have followers? Influence those who follow to birth their kind and develop others to lead.

A lifetime spent in the study of the history of societies since the dawn of mankind presumably inclined him to skepticism and misgivings in regard to any great scheme, religious or political, that set out to create universal happiness in one fell swoop; what it was more likely to create, in his opinion, was universal misery; and his faith in heaven-sent saviors was hardly greater.

A lie near to truth is always difficult to catch

Alignment of vision, mission, values and attitudes need to be matched between you and those you choose to surround yourself with. The cost of training or replacing will be very minimal and less painful if recruitment, selection and positioning are done well. This applies even to general employment processes, whether at leadership or staff levels.

A little stupid is like a little forest fire. If you happen upon some stupid, please stomp it out before it spreads.

All concepts of politics, of whatever kind, are about conflict──how to contain it, or abolish it.

All dreams of empire end because day breaks in the hearts of the slaves used to build it.

All great ideas, all great leaps of progress, all have a wake of sacrificial bodies.

All lessons worth learning are drenched in blood.” -Dread Empress Triumphant, First and Only of Her Name

All experienced murderers seek cover. By putting the Agency’s fingerprints on [Mafia] operations, the mob could anticipate that the CIA would [be forced to] cooperate in the cover-up of crucial information related to JFK's assassination

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

All humans are equal, but not everyone has the mental capacity to decide what's best for harmony and progress of a people.

All interpretations of history are propaganda for one idea or another.

All my years campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. Still, I realize this fully only by looking back.

All my pains has always increased my sense of purpose.