Best Political Quotes

We agreed that we cannot let personal political attacks get in the way of doing the very best we can for California's children. ~ Rob Reiner

The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The political climate during a campaign is not the best climate for reasonable debate. ~ Jose Mujica

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. ~ Albert Einstein

Every once in a while an issue comes up where I have to make a statement. I can't totally avoid all political issues, but I try my best to minimize them. When I do make a statement, I try to be fairly neutral. ~ Linus Torvalds

I suspect political fiction is at its best precisely when it doesn't preach, but restricts itself to showing the reader a different way of life or thought, and merely makes it clear that this is an end-point or outcome for some kind of political creed. ~ Charles Stross

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class. ~ Aristotle.

I think it's impossible for any of us not to find television, and the political process at its best on television, compelling. ~ Peter Jennings

Experience in other countries shows how big money, rather than the best political candidate, can influence politics. ~ Andrew Lansley

I have no idea what my best material is. Different people like different things. I'll say this: The political stuff gets the press, but the relationship jokes sell all the seats. ~ Chris Rock

I think the kids always they look forward to be always the big stars. Not only football, any profession. They want to be the best, singer, they want to be the best political, only the stars. But I think sometime the life give you opportunity, and long to be a big star, but you don't need to be a big star, you need to be beautiful, excellent man. Human being. This is the first. ~ Pele

There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators. ~ Will Rogers

It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Bishops and judges are some of the best politicians in the world. They know how to manipulate the political process. ~ David Blunkett

We Americans love to cite the 'political spectrum' as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry. ~ Rick Perlstein

All sciences have their mysteries and at certain points the apparently most obvious theory will be found in contradiction with experience. Politics, for example, offers several proofs of this truth. In theory, is anything more absurd than hereditary monarchy? We judge it by experience, but if government had never been heard of and we had to choose one, whoever would deliberate between hereditary and elective monarchy would be taken for a fool. Yet we know by experience that the first is, all things considered, the best that can be imagined, while the second is the worst. What arguments could not be amassed to establish that sovereignty comes from the people? However they all amount to nothing. Sovereignty is always taken, never given, and a second more profound theory subsequently discovers why this must be so. Who would not say the best political constitution is that which has been debated and drafted by statesmen perfectly acquainted with the national character, and who have foreseen every circumstance? Nevertheless nothing is more false. The best constituted people is the one that has the fewest written constitutional laws, and every written constitution is WORTHLESS. ~ Joseph De Maistre

The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: one of the choice ones of the earth. ~ Jon Meacham

The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making. ~ Ted Danson

I've learned that the best political reporters never make predictions! ~ Jodi Kantor

We need the conflagration of Love to change the world, we need the fire of love to illuminate the society. The cold, insipid and complicated codes don't change anything, don't transform anything. All the best social projects and the best political principles are useless if they are not written with the fire of Love. The real revolution is the result of transformation, only the storms of Love can transform the individual and the society. ~ Samael Aun Weor

Political criticism is our enemies' best friend. ~ Bernard Kerik

My pick for Best Political Move of the Year, which is the decisive (ph) and this means it is actually the best political movement is Bill Clinton getting on the phone and encouraging Donald Trump to run for the president. ~ Lawrence O'Donnell

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. ~ Eugene McCarthy

From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Because the task of a political leader is to do what he believes is better for his country. Sometimes the public opinion is in favor; sometimes the public opinion needs a little bit more time to understand things. ~ Jose Maria Aznar

Every country has its political face and political traditions. ~ Sergei Lavrov

[We should] set our eyes on the future. The political differences between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan should eventually be solved step by step, and [we] can not let these problems hand on from generation to generation. ~ Xi Jinping

You have to look also to the media, where you have a vast majority of the loudest and most influential political voices in America media from people who came from the entertainment world. ~ Ben Affleck

It's a sad fact in the political arena that once you get a taste of power, you feel like you know everything. ~ C.G. Cooper

I do not understand those who divide political life from the point of view of political parties. ~ Milos Zeman

If people can't tell when I'm being an idiot and when I'm being a genius, perhaps they'll assume my blunders are brilliant political maneuvers. ~ Brandon Sanderson

While I was studying film at the Academy, the problems started. I wasn't a political activist directly in the time of Saddam [Hussein], because the dictator was so cruel and brutal that no one could criticize or complain. I felt futile and empty. The only solution in Iraq was to run away. ~ Hassan Blasim

When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world-in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life-as we are called back to our "hidden wholeness" amid the violence of the storm. ~ Parker J. Palmer

The only quality needed for an MP is the ability to write a good letter. ~ Harold Macmillan

To pay attention to the American political process, and what the
candidates for this nation's highest office have to say and not say about the issues that are of importance to them and thus we are to presume importance to the Nation, you would get the impression that the issue of race, that the issue of racism, that the issue of discrimination, and certainly that the issue of white racial privilege were non existent issues; that they were of really no importance, or that of very little importance, because you will not hear and have not heard any of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, in either party, of whatever political ideology, make this an issue. Yes,they talk about poverty and occasionally they talk about schooling and education. They talk about healthcare. They talk about all of those things, but not once have any of those candidates tried to directly connect the role that racism, the role that racial
discrimination, the role that institutional racial oppression and white privilege play in regard to health care, in regard to housing, in regard to schooling. It is as if those issues exist in a vacuum and have no relationship to color, have no relationship to race, have
no relationship to a history of racial subordination. ~ Tim Wise

Republican patience with how unionism deals with the political institutions, and with key issues like equality and human rights, will be tested because, obviously, there will be a battle a day on these matters. So lets face up to all of this with our eyes wide open. ~ Gerry Adams

A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world's needs, significantly benefiting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security ... [T]he obstacles are primarily political, not technical. ~ Mark Z. Jacobson

Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process. ~ Arundhati Roy

Terrorism is a state of mind that on the one hand has to do with ignorance and, on the other hand, can be attributed to a feeling of desperation over the political situation, which at some point takes the form of revenge. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

Child, all books are magic. Just think,' he said, 'about what books make people do. People go to war on the basis of what they read in books. They believe in "facts" just because they are written down. They decide to adopt political systems, to travel to one place rather than another, to give up their job and go on a great adventure, to love or to hate. All books have tremendous power. And power is magic.' 'But are these books really magic...? ~ Scarlett Thomas

When the United States was in control of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely geopolitical purposes ... The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for political control ... We have nationalised the fight against drug trafficking. ~ Evo Morales

At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. ~ Dave Barry

Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness.
Not to be confused with the state of political bigotry, mental obstinacy, financial security, sensual atrophy, emotional penury, and spiritual collapse which, under the name "maturity", animated lives around him, it might be said that Reverend Gwyon had reached maturity. ~ William Gaddis

staying out of wars and political confrontations and zeroing in on business - its global influence far exceeds its existing economic strength. Nations do not fear China's military might; they fear its ability to give or withhold trade and investments."2 ~ Robert D. Blackwill

Meditation is like light: when meditation comes, politics disappears. So you cannot be meditative and political. That is impossible: you are asking for the impossible. Meditation is not one pole: it is the absence of all conflict, all ambition, all ego trips. ~ Rajneesh

In the early Middle Ages the dominant form of political organization in Western Europe was the Germanic kingdom, and the German kingdom was in some ways the complete antithesis of the modern state. (p. 13) ~ Joseph Reese Strayer

The illusion of free will, of freedom, is a useful tool you know. Let people think they are free and present them with a danger to their so-called freedom, a fear. It's amazing how much you can get them to deal with just as long as you tell them they're still free. ~ Jordon Greene

No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquillity and contentment, harmonious relations between management and wage earner, freedom from industrial strife, and the highest record of years of prosperity. ~ Calvin Coolidge

In a world so full of trauma, why should causing offense be a goal in and of itself? When people are told they shouldn't be offended, their pain is invalidated, deemed less important than the dominant culture's supposed right to remain complacent. ~ Phoebe Rusch

The basic problem is not political, it is a-political and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves. ~ Thomas Merton

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Anyhow, all mankind's ideas and interests, all human aims and motives, are exhibited, fully formed, in a three-year-old child. The kid is just operating on a smaller scale and lacks the advantage of having made enormous soft-money campaign contributions to political candidates. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Political balance among the competing groups was unstable because the king had no permanent armed force at his command. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Know thyself!" There is nothing that so aids and assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one's own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my captain's shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: "So were we any better?" When people express vexation, in my presence, over the West's tendency to crumble, its political shortsightedness, its divisiveness, its confusion - I recall too: "Were we, before passing through the Archipelago, more steadfast? Firmer in our thoughts?" And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: "Bless you, prison!"… (And from beyond the grave come replies: It is very well for you to say that - when you came out of it alive!) ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy
make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls. ~ John F. Kerry

The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more free speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens. ~ Timothy Snyder

For the institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from exisiting national parliaments. ~ Larry Siedentop

Chet couldn't wipe away his smile. "I have learned much since we parted ways, and one of those lessons is that a static force, even in mass, can be crushed by a dynamic one."

Wellington's face stiffened. "What kind of foolish talk is that?"

"You will find out. On the Fourth of July, as you sit here in your governor's mansion pandering to your public servants - using them to climb into more power, you will learn what it feels like to have everything you believe in shatter before your very eyes."

Wellington shifted irritably in his seat. "What sort of riddle is that, Chet? You and I have been in this political game our entire lives. You know how it works, and that's not going to change. Ever. One party controls the knobs of politics with one hand, and the other party controls the knobs with the other hand. But they are all one body, members of a political ruling class. That's what we do. This isn't anything new."

Chet pushed his brows over his eyes in a gaze that could melt steel. "You will not be able to stop the ramifications of its impact. This thing I'm about to unleash upon you, I'm doing to you because you are an evil man. I used to be, I'll give you that. But I changed, luckily, before death found me. And I will not let you get away with what you are doing to this country."

Wellington was aghast. "So you're involved with terrorism now, are you? What are you going to do?"

Chet shook his head. "The tru ~ Rich Hoffman

In the natural, spontaneous course of events, the first [political] system to arise is monarchy, and this is followed by kingship, but it takes the deliberate correction of the defects of monarchy for it to develop into kingship. Kingship changes into its congenital vice--that is, into tyranny--and then it is the turn of aristocracy, after the dissolution of tyranny, Aristocracy necessarily degenerates into oligarchy, and when the general populace gets impassioned enough to seek redress for the crimes committed by their leaders, democracy is born. And in due course of time, once democracy turns to violating and breaking the law, mob-rule arises and completes the series. ~ Polybius

Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline. ~ Robert Gilpin

What kind of justice is this?
Where the poor go to prison and the rich go free.
Where witnesses are rented, bought, or bribed.
Where people are tried not because of any criminal actions but because of their political beliefs. ~ Assata Shakur

Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before. ~ George W. Bush

Collective violence has flowed regularly out of the central political processes of western countries... The oppressed have struck in the name of justice, the privileged in the name of order, the in-between in the name of fear. ~ Charles Tilly

The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much. ~ Dick Morris

Woe to any sheep that hunts with wolves - rjs ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

While such charges may strike the reasonable among us as the very definition of lunacy, there is a reason they were made, a logic to them that went unchallenged within the echo chamber that is the American conservative right. Simply put, within a politics of white resentment and victimology, Hitler-laced rants work. After all, Hitler was not just a fascist, but is understood to have been a racial fascist: one whose dictatorial and murderous schemes were directed at a distinctly racialized "other." So to make the black man atop the U.S. political system into Hitler is to plant the idea in white minds that he too will be a racial fascist. And if that is the case, the question quite obviously arises, which race will he be coming for? Should we be scared? They certainly hope so, and are counting on it. ~ Tim Wise

Terror must never be allowed as a means for political confrontation. ~ Klaus Kinkel

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols ~ Aldous Huxley