"Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself."

"There may be cases in which there is so much of difficulty in knowing where the law stands that we take time to consider, and sometimes doubt much and sometimes differ among ourselves. But I believe every one of the Judges acts upon the principle that he is before man and God in the discharge of his duty, and acts upon his solemn oath, and declares tbe law not according to any political fancy, or for the purposes of serving one party or serving another, but according to the pure conviction of his own mind without looking to any party."

"The only way you can do that [decrease taxes, balance the budget, and increase military spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take."

"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."

":A weapon that comes down as still As snowflakes fall upon the sod; But executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of God; And from its force, nor doors nor locks Can shield you; 'tis the ballot-box."

"Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in business to the last."

"A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect."

"Abstain from beans."

"Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not."

"O, that estates, degrees, and offices Were not deriv'd corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!"

"Persuade me not; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it."

"Who is the dark horse he has in his stable?"

"Politics is about being able to do things that your colleagues couldn't do, and for them to recognize that. What marks out successful leaders from the unsuccessful is their decisiveness, courage and clarity - a strategic vision."

"As far I'm concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they're just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we're fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries."

"“I didn’t know that you were into politics.” “Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”"

"[T]he only mark-to-market thing in politics is Election Day; everything else is hot air."

"Politics was for those who had too much to eat."

"Furthermore, historians must not abandon political history entirely for sociology or cultural studies. Like it or not, politics matter to our societies and to our lives. We need only ask ourselves how different the world would have been if Hitler and the Nazis had not seized control of one of Europe’s most powerful states. Or what could have happened to American capitalism and the American people if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not been able, as president, to implement the New Deal."

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

"I think there's a less than 5 percent chance that what I'd like to see happen actually happens. But it seems to me an obligation, even if it's a 5 percent chance, to try to make it happen. You could call it a triumph of hope over experience. But what else is politics if not that?"

"A great change too will come over the power side of man’s development; the whole question of government and organization will stand upon a different basis. Men will see then vividly and clearly the effect upon the astral plane of many of their actions upon the physical, and thus much that is now done thoughtlessly will become an absolute impossibility There could be no possibility of the slaughter of animals for food, for example, if only men were able to see the results upon the astral plane which that slaughter produces. The crime which men call sport would be utterly abolished if they were able to see what it is that they are really doing. It needs so slight a development to change the whole face of this which we call civilization, and to change it very much for the better. p. 345"

"Politics: a Trojan horse race."

"Then the great question of government is also in an unsatisfactorv condition; for I think all will agree that there is no country in the world which is governed, as every country in the world ought to be, solely with regard to the interests and advancement of the people who are governed. On the contrary we find everywhere personal and party considerations, and matters are in such condition that even the wisest and the best of our statesmen cannot do many things which they wish to do, and find themselves forced into many actions of which in truth they do not approve... All of these difficulties arise from ignorance and selfishness. If men understood the plan of evolution, instead of working each for his own personal ends they would all join together as a community and work harmoniously for the good of all with mutual tolerance and forbearance. It is obvious that if this were done all of these evils would almost immediately cease or at any rate could very shortly be removed. p. 326"

"Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation."

": Despite the intentions of human politics, history has shown that it is often the one, not the many, who have led the world towards its destiny... now turn your eyes to Earth once more and tell me what you see."

"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises."

"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."

"... for our English grumbling is equally distributed between the weather and politics, and the case would be desperate when confined to the last."

"Many have argued that the basic question of Western political philosophy is why we accept to surrender a part of our liberty to join an organization. Wouldn’t it be better to remain free?"

"I will have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics. I part company with the Congress and Gandhi. I do not believe in working up mob hysteria. Politics is a gentleman's game."

"Good politics comes from love—love for the nation, the city, and the citizens. Normally, however, we only understand a concept when we are confronted with its contrary. We know what “hot” means by comparing it to “cold.” We may understand political charity by looking at its contrary, political malevolence. There are historical cases when rulers hate their citizens and seek to punish and destroy them."

"Politics is momentum."

"With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation... It is important to emphasize that throughout history political parties that rely upon lies bring society down to its knees in piles of shameless destruction."

"According to Chomsky, the Doomsday Clock setting at 100 seconds to midnight is based upon: (1) global warming (2) nuclear war and (3) disinformation, or the collapse of any kind of rational discourse. As such, number three makes it impossible to deal with the first two major problems. Along those lines, within the Republican Party there’s virtually a disappearance of any pretense of rational discourse. Twenty-five (25%) percent of Republicans believe the government is run by an elite satanic group of pedophiles. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. Only fifteen percent (15%) of Republicans believe that global warming is a serious problem. Therein lies an insurmountable problem to solving the main issues that continually tick the clock ever closer to a disaster scenario that will likely be unprecedented in the annals of warfare and environmental degradation. As a result, Chomsky says: “We’re living in a world of total illusion and fantasy.... Unless this is dealt with soon, it’ll be impossible to deal with the two major issues within the time span that we have available, which is not very long.”"

"Acts of commemoration are the very stuff of politics; in and through our political process we decide who or what should be remembered or memorialized and in what ways. As David Thelen argues, “[M]emory, private and individual, as much as collective and cultural is constructed, not reproduced. . . . [T]his construction is not made in isolation but in conversations with others that occur in the contexts of community, broader politics, and social dynamics.” Should law and legal process lend themselves to these processes? Can they do so without compromising values central to law’s integrity? These normative questions have so far driven scholarship of law and memory."

"That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion."

"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!""

"It has been pointed out often enough that politics takes on religious overtones when religion proper withers, at any rate among intellectuals."

"Nothing lies outside the political sphere understood in this way. Everything has a political color. It is always in the political fabric - and never outside of it - that a person emerges as a free and responsible being, as a person in relationship with other people, as someone who takes on a historical task. Personal relationships themselves acquire an ever-increasing political dimension. Man enter into relationships among themselves through political means."

"Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas."

"It is not nuclear violence alone that is the threat to mankind. It is the willingness to kill our fellow human beings – the innocent as well as the noninnocent- for political ends. Unless we are willing to redirect our time, energy, and resources away from perfecting the means of mass destruction of whatever sort and into exploring nonviolent alternatives to war itself, our efforts to combat the threat of nuclear war are likely to be of no avail."

"In all times and ages, political crimes have always been punished more severely than others – even in the degenerate State of Nicholas II. The fact that in modern 'democracies' we lean towards political clemency proves only one thing: the loss of any sense of the 'political' in general."

"There's an increasing sense in our political life that in both parties politicians call themselves public servants but act like bosses who think that voters work for them. Physicians who routinely help the needy and the uninsured do not call themselves servants. They get to be called the 1%. Politicians who jerk around doctors, nurses and health systems call themselves servants, when of course they look more like little kings and queens instructing the grudging peasants in how to arrange their affairs."

"They governments] talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the fools and the suckers."

"… that is the nature of politics: poly, meaning more than one, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking parasites."

"Politics is policy. What policy should you follow in view of the idea that there isn’t enough to go around — the power of the few, or the needs of the many? Political economy is based on misassumptions... That’s the basis of all politics: it has to be you or me, there’s not enough for both of us. Survival of the fittest... But we can do so much now, with so little, that we can take care of everybody. That’s why the idea of scarcity is all wrong. Up to now, the world of politics doesn’t know that. That’s why all nations are dependent on armaments, why we have the arms race. The politicians still say that it’s you or me, and that’s why they go for the gun... The young world is giving up any interest in their political system. They have decided that it is absolutely corrupt."

"Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy."