Academic Politics Quotes

Cynicism is the besetting and venial fault of declining youth, and disillusionment its last illusion. ~ Francis Macdonald Cornford

The political motive in the academic breast is honest enough. It is fear---genuine, perpetual, heart-felt timorousness. All the Political Arguments are addressed to this passion. Have you ever noticed how people say, 'I'm afraid I don't ...' when they mean, 'I think I don't ...'? ~ Francis Macdonald Cornford

Theory sometimes seems to me a way of taking revenge on literature - the critic masters the text and rewrites it in his own image, instead of submitting to it and listening to what it has to say. The aggressive ungainliness of so much academic writing about literature is a sign of this - it is unliterary writing about literature, which should be a contradiction in terms. ~ Adam Kirsch

I'm always suspicious of politics dividing people instead of bringing them together. ~ Barack Obama

So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed ... remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know. The question is what we're capable of knowing, and doing, if we have the right incentives, and the right opportunity. ~ Lawrence Lessig

It seems that Russia today - dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror - is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Pelosi's problem is her spine doesn't reach her brain. ~ Liz Cheney

One cannot reject an entire nation because of the politics of its leader. ~ Letitia Baldrige

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons. ~ John Ruskin

Politics is for people who are too ugly to get into showbusiness. ~ William J. Clinton

There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die. ~ Edward M. Kennedy

It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept. ~ Mike Leigh

Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics. ~ Morton Blackwell

In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course. ~ Tacitus

You earn money, and one day money is there
then life says to you, 'What have you got?' But you don't listen. Now you think you have to put your money into politics, you have to become a prime minister or a president
then everything will be okay. One day you are a prime minister, and life again says, 'What have you got?' You don't listen. You go on thinking of something else and something else and something else. Life is vast
that's why many lives are wasted. ~ Rajneesh

Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. ~ Robert A. Caro

Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation. ~ Tacitus

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them ~ Frank Herbert

You do the policy, I'll do the politics. ~ Dan Quayle

Independence has made us Soft ~ Houari Boumediene

It is undoubtedly true that religion is often socially conservative. By binding a people together under a shared God, a common cosmology and a common morality, religion creates order and stability and its rituals create social cohesio ... n. By promising to the pious poor rewards in the next life, it reconciles them to their fate in this one and thus discourages them from rebelling against their condition ...
[also] religion [is] an inspiration to radicalism and rebellion. religion is a potential threat to any political or social order because it claims an authority higher than any available in this world. pp. 10-11 ~ Steve Bruce

Liberty is never safer than when politicans are terrified. ~ Ted Cruz

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch. ~ John Le Carre

Emancipatory politics always consists in making seem possible precisely that which, from within the situation, is declared to be impossible. ~ Alain Badiou

When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves. ~ Jerry Brown

When I was older, I found Iqbal's work hugely inspirational. He argued against an unquestioning acceptance of Western democracy as the self-governing model, and instead suggested that by following the rules of Islam a society would tend naturally towards social justice, tolerance, peace and equality. Iqbal's interpretation of Islam differs very widely from the narrow meaning that is sometimes given to it. For Iqbal, Islam is not just the name for certain beliefs and forms of worship. The difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is not merely a theological one - it is a difference of a fundamental attitude towards life. ~ Imran Khan

And when attacked by a Capitol-aligned soldier in District 2, she tells him that fighting in the Capitol's wars makes them all slaves: "It just goes around and around and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their Games." Game theory is not about games. It's about politics and psychology, war and strategy. For Katniss Everdeen, it is life and death, and in the end, everyone in Panem comes to learn that the only way to truly win the game is not to play at all. ~ Leah Wilson

How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? ~ William Butler Yeats

I had no intention of getting back into politics. I was teaching at Bowdoin and happily retired from politics. ~ Angus King

For the average American freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more. ~ Gore Vidal

Everybody knows the thing about an infinite number of monkeys," Fenig said. "An infinite number of monkeys is put to work at an infinite number of typewriters and eventually one of them reproduces a great work of literature. In what language I don't know. But what about an infinite number of writers in an infinite number of cages? Would they make on monkey sound? One genuine chimp noise? Would they eventually swing by their toes from an infinite number of monkey bars? Would they shit monkey shit? It's academic, you say. You may be right. ~ Don DeLillo

I'm interested in current affairs and social policy as a whole, but I don't watch politics for sport. ~ Anna Chlumsky

It's how I refer to that sinking feeling that none of this matters. Not the money. Not the academic prestige. Not the fame or influence. Not the beautiful girls. Not anything. It's all meaningless in the end. ~ Zack Love

From the end of the World War twenty-one years ago, this country, like many others, went through a phase of having large groups of people carried away by some emotion--some alluring, attractive, even speciously inspiring, public presentation of a nostrum, a cure-all. Many Americans lost their heads because several plausible fellows lost theirs in expounding schemes to end barbarity, to give weekly handouts to people, to give everybody a better job--or, more modestly, for example, to put a chicken or two in every pot--all by adoption of some new financial plan or some new social system. And all of them burst like bubbles.

Some proponents of nostrums were honest and sincere, others--too many of them--were seekers of personal power; still others saw a chance to get rich on the dimes and quarters of the poorer people in our population. All of them, perhaps unconsciously, were capitalizing on the fact that the democratic form of Government works slowly. There always exists in a democratic society a large group which, quite naturally, champs at the bit over the slowness of democracy; and that is why it is right for us who believe in democracy to keep the democratic processes progressive--in other words, moving forward with the advances in civilization. That is why it is dangerous for democracy to stop moving forward because any period of stagnation increases the numbers of those who demand action and action now. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

People are kept unaware of the reality, with the sweet and illusive candy of nationalism. They are made to believe in their bones that killing people in the name of sovereignty is the most glorious act of all - they are made to believe that the citizens of the neighboring country are their arch-enemies - they are made to believe that nationality is far greater than humanity. They are made to believe that surgical strikes against the nation across the border is a great patriotic deed - they are made to believe that raising wall and separating children from their parents are deeds of great glory. In short, politicians (not all) in the government keep doing whatever they desire, and the citizens choose to keep their mouth silent in obedience because that to them is the greatest act of patriotism. In short, to these spineless citizens, their country is always right and the neighboring country is always wrong - their country is always good and the neighboring country is always evil - their country is always on the side of ethics and morality, and the neighboring country is always on the side of moral degradation. And this has been going on since the rise of human civilization across the world. When will this change, one wonders! And the answer is now. You change - just you - you the individual - you the one human - and slowly but surely, little by little, the entire society will change. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service. ~ Arthur Hugh Clough

The mass hallucination of the twentieth century is this: that all these national governments, which each year kill or threaten way more humans than they protect, and take a big chunk of your income to do so, are for some reason a great idea, an inevitable force of fucking nature. ~ Tyler Mcmahon

To govern a society shared by people of emotion, people of reason, and everybody in between - as well as people who think their actions are shaped by logic but in fact are shaped by feelings or nonempirical philosophies - you need politics. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world. ~ Hilary Mantel