Political Beliefs Quotes

I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe. ~ David Mamet

My political beliefs are my moral, quasi-religious framework. ~ Ken Livingstone

Political beliefs, religious beliefs, and conspiratorial beliefs seem impenetrable to facts that contradict them. ~ Robert Carroll

Every form of communication is for the purpose of feeling, experiencing, sharing. Everyone has their own intense journey through life, and you don't want to do it all alone. It's really meaningful to be able to share with people. Whether it's your political beliefs, or what goes on for you emotionally, or keeping track of history. ~ Mirah

This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony.

This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They a ~ Arved Mark Ashby

Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party. ~ Jane Addams

This universality of physical laws tells us that if we land on another planet with a thriving alien civilization, they will be running on the same laws that we have discovered and tested here on Earth - even if the aliens harbor different social and political beliefs. Furthermore, if you wanted to talk to the aliens, you can bet they don't speak English or French or even Mandarin. Nor would you know whether shaking their hands - if indeed their outstretched appendage is a hand - would be considered an act of war or of peace. Your best hope is to find a way to communicate using the language of science. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In my platoon, we came from different parts of the country, with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs-and yet we all put those differences aside. Fundamentally, I believe that's what the American people expect of Congress as well. We all ought to be able to come together in Washington and do what's best for our America. ~ Seth Moulton

As Governor, I could think of only one way to unify our State that was made up of so many different climates, political beliefs and people, and that was our music. ~ Lamar Alexander

CoMasonry, in that it admits women, is something different, something distinct from the other Masonic bodies," said the January 1913 edition of Universal CoMasonry.240 "It has not been organized and is not maintained in America to compete with any of them, to condemn or fight any of them, but to fill a role of its own and that is to bring together in one organization men and women of all nationalities and races, of all creeds and political beliefs and have them, through the greatest of all Masonic virtues, TOLERANCE, work in peace and harmony to hasten the day when Universal Brotherhood shall be a reality, understood and lived. ~ Karen Kidd

If love had feathers and tasted like dog food, then I suggest you wear shoes with your banana pudding. (This statement also defines my political beliefs). ~ Jarod Kintz

Of course, my own political beliefs inform the ideas I come up with. ~ Alison Jackson

But it is not our place to punish a father for his political beliefs or where he wants to raise his child. Indeed, if we were to start judging parents on the basis of their political beliefs, we would change the concept of family for the rest of time. ~ Janet Reno

Most of us don't really fear political disagreements with our close friends. We fear not being liked and respected by people we like and respect. Challenging someone's political beliefs can signal (correctly or not) a lack of respect or affection. One way to prevent this from happening is to say something like 'I think you are a great person, and I value our friendship, so when I disagree with you it's because I value your opinion and want to learn more about how you see things.' If someone manages to communicate this idea to me, then I'm probably not going to hesitate to express my real opinions about controversial issues. It also helps if we don't call each other 'stupid,' 'evil,' or 'crazy' when 'I don't quite see it that way; help me understand what you mean' will do just fine. ~ Michael Austin

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. ~ Pete Seeger

Frankly, most of my friends hold very different political beliefs. It's just a funny thing in this country that supposedly you can't sit down and have dinner and enjoy another person's company if you don't have the same beliefs. It's ridiculous. ~ Patricia Heaton

Of one thing we can be certain: every person we see - no matter the race, religion, political beliefs, body type, or appearance - is family. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals. ~ Wendell Willkie

Not everybody believes in the possibility of political persuasion. Many people see political positions as expressions of innate personality traits - hard-wired into us either by our genes or by an irreversible process of socialization. Why should we waste time trying to be persuasive when people never really change their minds? This is a reasonable concern.

The idea that persuasion doesn't work comes from a bad application of good science. A substantial body of research suggests that our political beliefs are shaped by more or less fixed psychological characteristics ... Research like this, however, tells us about the difficulty of conversion, not persuasion. These are not the same things. We too often misrepresent the task of political persuasion by thinking of the most strident partisan we have ever encountered and imagining what it would take to turn that person into an equally strident partisan for the other side. This sort of Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus conversion rarely happens in politics. Most people don't change their fundamental values, and if we expect them to, we are going to be very disappointed.

But we usually don't need people to change their fundamental values in order to convince them to adopt a particular position. The fact that people have fundamental values makes it possible to persuade them by appealing to those values. But we have to find values that we really share. ~ Michael Austin

We can trust our doctors to be professional, to minister equally to their patients without regard to their political or religious beliefs. But we can no longer trust our professors to do the same. ~ David Horowitz

Throughout amerika's history, people have been imprisoned because of their political beliefs and charged with criminal acts in order to justify that imprisonment.

Those who have dared to speak out against the injustices in this country, both Black and white, have paid dearly for their courage, sometimes with their lives. ~ Assata Shakur

There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so - of blaming literary theory for being caught up with such questions, as opposed to some 'pure' literary theory which might be absolved from them. Such 'pure' literary theory is an academic myth: some of the theories we have examined in this book are nowhere more clearly ideological than in their attempts to ignore history and politics altogether. Literary theor ~ Terry Eagleton

Atrocities are human nature - they don't have political beliefs, color, creed or anything like that. They just happen, it's human. ~ Clancy Brown

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

This is a challenge when we consider the four earliest extant biographies of Jesus, known as the canonical Gospels. There is somewhat of a consensus among contemporary scholars that the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography (bios). Bioi offered the ancient biographer great flexibility for rearranging material and inventing speeches in order to communicate the teachings, philosophy, and political beliefs of the subject, and they often included legend. Because bios was a flexible genre, it is often difficult to determine where history ends and legend begins.24 ~ Michael R. Licona

But artistically, my art I kept very separate from my political beliefs, deliberately and very, very rarely would I allow that kind of thing into it. ~ Robert Barry

I'm realizing this more and more that it's one thing to get involved with your own political beliefs and stand behind you believe in personally. ~ John Petrucci

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources. ~ Janet Napolitano

My father had no influence on my political beliefs, and to imply otherwise is wrong and irresponsible. ~ M.I.A.

He was a very small man, both in stature and girth, who had been chosen as a running mate as much for his size as for his political beliefs. The pervasive thinking in government was that a taller vice president would make the President appear weak, replaceable. ~ Ann Patchett

I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium. ~ Carrie Mae Weems

In the world of pop stardom, what is mistaken for rebellion? A mediocre artist who spouts political beliefs that most freshmen in high school could have come up with after huffing Glade. ~ Greg Gutfeld

Vichy officials and collaborationists imprisoned 135,000 people (many for little more than their political beliefs), sent 650,000 more to Germany as "guest workers" under an obligatory labor scheme, and, most notoriously, sent 76,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. Less than 3 percent of those Jews survived. ~ Michael S. Neiberg

This is a free country, and nobody should be criticized for their political beliefs. We're all allowed to have our opinions. ~ Shannen Doherty

For so many of my characters, they were political in their own countries and they risked their lives for certain political beliefs that they had, only to be brought to America where they're not treated like Americans - they're just not really treated like anything. ~ Molly Antopol

I hope that I would put whatever my political beliefs aside, and realize that my country's asked me to to something, and do it. ~ Jon Bernthal

Those life experiences that helped shaped my political beliefs are with me in every position I take and every vote that I cast - whether it be in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, or improving our nation's education system. ~ Mark Takano

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon. ~ Walter Lippmann

The seventh type of guerrilla organization is that formed from bands of bandits and brigands. This, although difficult, must be carried out with utmost vigor lest the enemy use such bands to his own advantage. Many bandit groups pose as anti-Japanese guerrillas, and it is only necessary to correct their political beliefs to convert them. In ~ Mao Zedong

Kindness' covers all of my political beliefs. ~ Roger Ebert

Scott and Terry created a political theatre in which a Hanovarian English monarch could appear on the stage of Edinburgh to act the part of a Stuart king. ~ Cairns Craig

My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I've given. ~ Russell Simmons

I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy. ~ James Hillman

With the right Mindset ... effective thinking is automatic. ~ Tony Dovale

On the existence and threat of modern-day secret societies: We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence . . . building a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. - JOHN F. KENNEDY, FROM A SPEECH GIVEN AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL ON APRIL 27, 1961 ~ James Rollins

As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men can get food to eat. ~ Jack London

Religion will not get us where we need to go. It just goes so far, and then we're on our own toward the open space where there are no religious practices or beliefs. ~ Art Hochberg

For it is evident that those who regard the whole earth as their future territory will stress the organ of domestic violence and will rule conquered territory with police methods and personnel rather than with the army. ~ Hannah Arendt

If only political leaders would allow themselves to feel, as well as to think, the world might be a happier place. ~ Golda Meir

Amid the welter of vague political abstractions ... where meanings shift so quickly and so subtly, not only following changes of thought, but often manipulated artificially by political practitioners so as to obscure, expand, or distort ... a certain broad consistency in its relations to other kindred terms is the nearest approach to definition which such a term as Imperialism admits. Nationalism, internationalism, colonialism, its three closest congeners, are equally elusive, equally shifty, and the changeful overlapping of all four demands the closest vigilance. ~ J. Allan Hobson

Winning an award is a great feeling but winning the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award is particularly exhilarating because it is based upon public voting. I find it a strange quirk of fate that Chanakya's Chant, a political tale, should end up winning an election! ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. ~ Henry A. Wallace

Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states. Use your body as a tool to snap yourself into a place of sheer will, determination, and commitment. Face your challenges head on with the core belief that problems are just speed bumps on the road to your dreams. And from that place, when you take massive action - with an effective and proven strategy - you will rewrite your history. ~ Anthony Robbins

All that political stuff Delano was doing. Me, I've gone off the top, into total fantasy. ~ Eddie Campbell

The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth. ~ George MacDonald Fraser

I'm not a 'messiah' coming to change Washington. I don't come with a political background, so I think it's part of my responsibility to raise my hand and say 'Why?' Folks don't just want smaller government; they want an efficient small government. ~ James Lankford

A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman. ~ Russell Baker

Extravagance was a political necessity. ~ Dan Jones

I want people to be allowed to make jokes about, and discuss, anything they want. I don't think people should be ostracized for doing so. ~ Milo Yiannopoulos

The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart credit for that. He traveled to every state in the country. He really made people with disabilities understand that they had some political power. ~ Major Owens

There is a difference between exercising religious beliefs and imposing them on others. Our Constitution fiercely protects the former and expressly prohibits the latter. ~ Joseph Kennedy III

It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Sometimes they seemed to grasp instinctively at the worst of both worlds: the worst modern habits, the worst traditional beliefs. ~ Peter Hessler

If you have the right to influence the laws that are made in your community, why not take the opportunity to do something good? ~ Victoria Stoklasa

In the United States and Canada, many young people are currently being raised on the idea of "safe spaces". Ideas that fall outside of the framework of Political Correctness are seen as so offensive that hearing these ideas is believed to be psychologically damaging. The young generation should therefore get 'protected' from these opposing ideas. It is hard to come up with a more effective way to create a generation of idiots. Besides being deeply and intensely indoctrinated with Political Correctness, these young people have an additional tendency to connect Western values and principles to the concept of "white supremacy". Western values and principles are thus "racist" and Western Civilisation is "oppressive". ~ Paul Nielsen

I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle. ~ Nelson Mandela

So much of politics is about the daily grind of political business: the people to see, the myriad different facets of government, the remorseless agenda of this part of the media or that. ~ Tony Blair

Praxis is about applying one's knowledge to challenge oppressive systems and unequal traditions. It is related to the well-known phrase "the personal is political" espoused by many advocates of the second-wave women's movement. ~ Michele Tracy Berger

Animals, including people, fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In the world of territorial animals, this principle explains the success of defenders. A biologist observed that "when a territory holder is challenged by a rival, the owner almost always wins the contest - usually within a matter of seconds." In human affairs, the same simple rule explains much of what happens when institutions attempt to reform themselves, in "reorganizations" and "restructuring" of companies, and in efforts to rationalize a bureaucracy, simplify the tax code, or reduce medical costs. As initially conceived, plans for reform almost always produce many winners and some losers while achieving an overall improvement. If the affected parties have any political influence, however, potential losers will be more active and determined than potential winners; the outcome will be biased in their favor and inevitably more expensive and less effective than initially planned. Reforms commonly include grandfather clauses that protect current stake-holders - for example, when the existing workforce is reduced by attrition rather than by dismissals, or when cuts in salaries and benefits apply only to future workers. Loss aversion is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quo in the lives of both institutions and individuals. ~ Daniel Kahneman

As far as I know, the question of whether and how it could be strategically or morally justified was never the subject of open debate in Germany after 1945, no doubt mainly because a nation which had murdered and worked to death millions of people in its camps could hardly call on the victorious powers to explain the military and political logic that dictated the destruction of the German cities. ~ W.G. Sebald

In recent years, even as the court has become an increasingly political body, the Senate is not focused on preserving any perceived ideological balance when Democrat presidents have appointed people to the court. ~ Sam Brownback

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful. ~ H.L. Mencken

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Political commercials encourage the deceptive, the destructive and the degrading. ~ John O'Toole

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society - a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Now that we have understood the nature of speciesism and seen the consequences it has for nonhuman animals it is time to ask: What can we do about it? There are many things that we can and should do about speciesism. We should, for instance, write to our political representatives about the issues discussed in this book; we should make our friends aware of these issues; we should educate our children to be concerned about the welfare of all sentient beings; and we should protest publicly on behalf of nonhuman animals whenever we have an effective opportunity to do so. While ~ Peter Singer

Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. ~ Margaret Sanger

Beliefs are the roads we take to our dreams. Believe you can do something-or believe you can't-and you'll be right everytime. ~ Jodi Picoult

[French Revolution rejected] the sacred foundation both of history and of the state. History was no longer measured on the basis of an idea of God that had preceded it and given it shape. The state came to be understood in purely secular terms, based on rationalism and the will of citizens.
The secular state arose for the first time, abandoning and excluding any divine guarantee or legitimation of the political element as a mythological vision of the world and declaring that God is a private question that does not belong to the public sphere or to the democratic formation of the public will. Public life was now considered the realm of reason alone, which had no place for a seemingly unknowable God. From this perspective, religion and faith in God belonged to the realm of sentiment, not of reason. God and His will therefore ceased to be relevant to public life. ~ Pope Benedict XVI