Modern Politics Quotes

The problem with modern politics is everybody is doing sound bite stuff. In my stump speech, I give 20 minutes on why I think we're off track. And I think people do really want to engage in a serious high-level discussion on how to get the country back on track because people care about their own country. ~ Dave Brat

There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice. ~ Stephen Mansfield

The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics. ~ Charlie Pierce

But I think it's quite clear in my work that my orientation isn't political or doesn't come out of modern politics. ~ Jane Campion

American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses. ~ Henry Adams

I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Social media is natural to me, and it's a very immediate way of saying something. It's the way politics are done these days. In modern politics, you can't ignore that even if you wanted to. I can't imagine doing politics without it. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

English political sagacity is compounded of instinctive reactions to immediate situations and a wisdom, gained by cumulative experience, which guides instinct through the complexities, intricacies and imponderabilities of modern politics. The most typical social philosopher of England is not John Locke but Edmund Burke. Constitutional government may have found its first justification in the rationally elaborated theories of "rights" in the philosophy of the former. But the actual history of constitutionalism in England has been dominated by the logic expressed in the philosophy of the latter. The Englishman trusts not in the abstract "natural rights" dictated by reason, but the "English rights" which are guaranteed to him by his own history. ~ Reinhold Neibuhr

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces. ~ Henry Adams

It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics. ~ Matthew Arnold

What this brings out is that modern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means, ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

We are living in modern times throughout the world and yet are dominated by medieval minds. ~ Eqbal Ahmad

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

So much of modern politics is focused not on honest differences of policy but on personal attacks. ~ William J. Clinton

Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness; forgetfulness that the production of this [man's] happy and conscious life is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs. ~ G.K. Chesterton

De Tocqueville, after his tour of the United States in 1831, was to comment that "The Senate contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe." De Tocqueville was not the only foreign observer deeply impressed. The Victorian historian Sir Henry Maine said that the Senate was "the only thoroughly successful institution which has been established since the tide of modern democracy began to run." Prime Minister William Gladstone called it "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics. ~ Robert A. Caro

Modern politics today requires a mastery of television. I've never really warmed up to television and, in fairness to television, it's never warmed up to me. ~ Walter F. Mondale

These various interests are well organized, command more wealth than most modern nations, and are represented in Congress with a strength far greater than is justified in any constitutional or democratic sense. (Modern politics is expensive - power follows money.) ~ Edward Abbey

Search for what is good and strong and beautiful in your society and elaborate from there. Push outward. Always create from what you already have. Then you will know what to do. ~ Michel Foucault

Major Trends [is] the canonical modern work on the nature and history of Jewish mysticism. For a sophisticated understanding, not only of the dynamics of Jewish mysticism, but of the exquisite complexities of Jewish history and tradition, Major Trends is a major port of entry through which one must pass. ~ Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory. ~ Beck

If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them ~ Karl Marx

In India there's no modernism without barbarism. Strip away the young man's face and you'll find an old man's mind. ~ Meghna Pant

In a legitimate democracy, all have an equal say. ~ Joshua Emmet

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore? ~ Andrew Sullivan

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows. ~ Ed Koch

It's like in politics: You can have great intentions for the world, but if you're not a good speaker and if you're not the sort of person that people can intimately link with, then it makes it very easy to say, "Well, they're not a nice person." ~ Tom Felton

Dr. Ockenga had been a student of Machen's at Princeton University and followed him out. But then Ockenga, like Dad, became a critic of the fundamentalist's endless civil wars and started looking for a new way to present a friendlier evangelical faith (and face). He helped invent a movement called the New Evangelicals. Their mascot was Billy Graham. Other figures like Carl Henry, founder of Christianity Today magazine (and a man who became bitterly jealous of my father in later years), criticized fundamentalism's failure to address the world's intellectual and social needs. A movement was born - modern evangelicalism, a fundamentalism-lite where everyone could more or less do their own theological thing, as long as they "named the name of Christ" and paid lip service to the "inerrancy" of the Bible. On ~ Frank Schaeffer

If guns don't kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns? ~ DaShanne Stokes

The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. ~ Arthur Koestler

The determined attempt to discredit Robert Mueller, the FBI and the Justice Department is an endeavor to protect the fervent saber rattlers themselves. You see, all this commotion kicked into overdrive once the Special Counsel sought information from Deutsche Bank. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

This victory is in large part due to the Internet ... For the first time, a coalition of NGOs has had an influence on the security of the entire world without being a superpower. ~ Jody Williams

You've already seen the shift of the media to blindly follow the dictates of the government. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

It is the civilian part of the politics that is very, very bad, and we have to change that. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

A commanding woman versed in politics, diplomacy, and governance; fluent in nine languages; silver-tongued and charismatic, Cleopatra nonetheless seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors. ~ Stacy Schiff

Feeling had controlling influence over those primitive people, not thinking. It played a crucial part in the evolutionary development of modern humans. That's why we humans are basically an emotional species alongside being the smartest one. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Nothing like modern art for sterilizing the life out of things. ~ Aldous Huxley

Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger. ~ Ron Paul

I think growing up in a small town is a good foundation for anyone who decides to enter politics. You get to know people as individuals, not as blocs or members of special interest groups. ~ Ronald Reagan

We are creating the future. It is not determined. If we get our act together and solve our current problems, we could have a sustainable, abundant future. If we don't, we could wipe ourselves out. We are on the verge of doing it with our current politics. It is regressive, going back the other way. ~ Edgar Mitchell

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether. ~ Neil Postman

Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Only the camera seems to be really capable of describing modern life. ~ Alexander Rodchenko

A Call for Revolution, 1993 Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right - which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. The libertarian faith in the mind of man is rejected by religionists who have faith only in the sins of man ... The libertarian insistence that each man is a sovereign land of liberty, with his primary allegiance to himself, is rejected by patriots who sing of freedom but also shout of banners and boundaries. ~ Karl Hess

Jesus had no regard for the lifeboat politics you and I live within every day. ~ Donald Miller

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

For the longest time, Indian women have been okay with being curvy. But I think the modern Indian woman needs to get toned. I don't endorse being thin. Anorexia and bulimia are a reality in India because everybody wants to be thin. ~ Bipasha Basu

To reject any vast group of one's cultural ancestors in the cause of some current theory is not just arrogance; it's posthumous mass murder. It's the same kind of thinking that makes genocide possible. The masses (albeit the dead masses) and the pathetic little lives they lived are irrelevant compared to this greater purpose we have at hand. Write them out of the record. They never existed.
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One could not judge things by the brief span of one's own lifetime. That was at the core of modern arrogance: only my lifetime counts. My lifetime is 'forever.' Time before it and time after it do not exist. Everything of importance must come to pass in my lifetime. This is what drives the frenzy for change. ~ Tony Hendra

Adding more bull to bull yields bigger bull. ~ Cathy Burnham Martin

We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination of human rights. ~ Dan Quayle

In The Blank Slate I argued that the modern denial of the dark side of human nature - the doctrine of the Noble Savage - was a reaction against the romantic militarism, hydraulic theories of aggression, and glorification of struggle and strife that had been popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ~ Steven Pinker

Governments will be provided with the choice of either accommodating themselves to co-ordinating proliferating human variety or seeking to reduce that variety by repressive measures. ~ Peter J. Carroll

The challenge as we saw in the Nigerian project was to restructure the economy decisively in the direction of a modern free market as an appropriate environment for cultivation of freedom and democracy and the natural emergence of a new social order. ~ Ibrahim Babangida

Above all, as the keynote of all Democratic policy, in passing upon any question, let the controlling aim and ambition be to keep the road open for private enterprise and personal initiative. ~ John W. Davis

Someone's looking for a lead, in his duty to a king or creed. Protecting what he feels is right, fights against wrong with his life. ~ Robert Palmer

The most elementary of good manners ... at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics. ~ Laura Esquivel

You have to be either naive or power-hungry to get into politics. I wouldn't consider it myself. I am too well-informed. ~ Jon Bon Jovi

The government says law, but they mean levy. ~ Amit Kalantri

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Beware of leaders who prefer controlling 100 % of nothing over sharing a fortune. ~ Julion Okram