Politics

"In politics, wishful thinking just gives the wolves a license to howl."

"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."

"Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics."

"…even the best politics will not and cannot provide the fullness of hope we need. Politics matters, of course, but a hope based in politics, regardless of right or left, will always disappoint. …A people given over to wickedness will ruin even the best political system. Nor can we vote our way to righteousness; politics cannot make us love our neighbors as ourselves. From newly minted college Marxists to MAGA social media, many of those who are investing their hearts and hopes in politics are looking for things that politics cannot give to them. Politics will never love them back, and the things that politics can sometimes deliver, such as vengeance and a sense of triumph over one’s perceived enemies, are hardly the foundations of lasting personal happiness, living the good life, and building a flourishing society. Those who trust in politics will be distraught when the political winds turn against them, even if little to nothing changes in their day-to-day lives."

"In politics, nothing moves unless it's pushed."

"Politics is not an exact science."

"Sound doctrine is sound politics."

"In politics, you have your word and your friends; go back on either and you're dead."

"Die Politik ist die Lehre vom Möglichen."

"In volunteer politics, a builder can build faster than a destroyer can destroy."

"POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."

"POLITICS, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

"PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics."

"Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people."

"Political technology determines political success."

"Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?"

"Politics is nothing but common action to secure more favorable living conditions."

"All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end."

"Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion."

"There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies."

"Politics is people."

"Man is by nature a political animal."

"He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them."

"It is necessary therefore that the person who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and politics generally, should have received a good moral training. For our data here are moral judgments, and if a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them. As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod:"

"‘He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.’"

"The shifty language of politics,... that strange language full of Maya and falsities of self-illusion and deliberate delusion of others, which almost immediately turns all true and vivid phrases into a jargon, so that men may fight in a cloud of words without any clear sense of the thing they are battling for...."

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

"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"

"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"

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

"Politics: a Trojan horse race."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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

"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."

"Politics is momentum."

"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."

"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.”"

"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."

"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!""

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

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

"There's no real power in Politics. Every day, it's all about whose turn it is to get punched in the face."

"Life isn’t binary — and neither is politics. If you are adrift in the ocean, your enemy isn’t just sharks; it’s thirst, hunger, drowning, and despair itself. If you face your predicament assuming the only thing you have to worry about is being eaten by a shark, you might fend off the sharks, but you will also probably die. Indeed, by ignoring other threats, you’d probably make yourself more vulnerable to a shark attack."

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