Political Climate Quotes

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

I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate. ~ Julianna Baggott

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) new Summary for Policymakers is a political document that downplays assessments of uncertainty from the scientific reports. It omits much contrary evidence. In several cases, it even disagrees with the reports on which it is based. ~ Steven F. Hayward

However, in a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible. ~ Richard Hofstadter

Except now everything is digital even murder. There is a record for everything under the sun from the moon and back whether we like it or not. The image that I have of the future is that it is very bleak. It is darkness visible. The black dog of depression will hang us all in the end. Considering the life we live, the values we teach our children, what we believe in everything is a movement for change and every pause between words is a revolutionary act. The 'struggle' was like a painful mental illness. The liberation in retrospect was either the exit from our slavery ushering us into a novel, brave, bold and brilliant world or a mass hallucination. The political climate in post-apartheid South Africa has gone as far as corrupting liberty. ~ Abigail George

I began to think that there was a place for 'Footloose' to get retold again, that there was actually a more conducive political climate, an emotional climate to explore a town that has experienced a trauma and a shock, and starts overreacting. ~ Craig Brewer

I don't believe that clothes can start a revolution, but I do believe that fashion is often a manifestation of a sociological or political climate. ~ Tom Ford

I'm just thinking. I guess I'm a little worried about our current political climate. The country, the state, and even the city . . . we are very divided, maybe more divided than any time in recent history. The silent underbelly of racist attitudes has become far more emboldened. ~ Mark M. Bello

ISIS is a terrorist entity whose barbarities have been condemned by all those who value our common humanity. In the current political climate, when hate crimes are rising and political rhetoric is increasingly divisive, this is all the more shocking. ~ Jonathan Sacks

If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn't being political, it is being selfish. ~ Phil Jones

The homeland, the myth of the homeland, becomes a fundamental value for those who have nothing else( ... )In a world where power, like wealth, falls to the few, where no merit guarantees a reward and justice becomes a commodity like anything else, the human heart needs fortification. It needs something permanent, something available to everyone, irrespective of their merits, of the political climate, of prestige, authority, or affluence. It may be that for the disinherited, this final place is their place of birth. A law that says we are all born equal is as beautiful as it is impossible to enact. But the fact that we are all born in a particular place is hard to question. For many of us, if not the majority, this is the only incontrovertible foundation of our fate. ~ Andrzej Stasiuk

Nuclear tests poison the environment - and they also poison the political climate. They breed mistrust, isolation and fear. ~ Ban Ki-moon

This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials. ~ George Takei

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective support for coming to critical consciousness – in communities, in institutions, among friends. ~ Bell Hooks

Something happened during the 1980s - perhaps the political climate of that time - that caused me to ask how a people would become part of a system that oppresses their own people. ~ Edward P. Jones

Today's political climate does not allow the luxury of apathy. ~ Trent Reznor

I love the unanswered question, the unresolved story, the unclimbed mountain, the tender shard of an incomplete dream. Most of the time. But is it mandatory for a writer to be ambiguous about everything? Isn't it true that there have been fearful episodes in human history when prudence and discretion would have just been euphemisms for pusillanimity? When caution was actually cowardice? When sophistication was disguised decadence? When circumspection was really a kind of espousal? Isn't it true, or at least theoretically possible, that there are times in the life of a people or a nation when the political climate demands that we - even the most sophisticated of us - overtly take sides? I think such times are upon us. ~ Arundhati Roy

I wish I could attribute the absence of any conventional Arab offensive in the last 20 years to a change of political climate or a willingness to abide by past accords. But unfortunately it is more likely that the Egyptians or Syrians concluded that the next time their tanks headed to Tel Aviv, there was nothing stopping the counterassaults from ending up in downtown Cairo or Damascus. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

While mainstream media is led by profit, ratings and popularist culture and filtered by the current political climate, Alternative Media is lead solely by the convictions of the campaign and film maker. ~ Ben Edwards

(Asked by John King about the political climate that existed in Washington at the time, and criticism of the Department of Justice under his management) Listen I don't expect an apology from men like Chuck Schumer, and I would put him and other individuals who were attacking me at the top of the list contributing to the low, low public perception of Congress, the integrity of Congress quite frankly. ~ Alberto Gonzales

When people ask me what they should do, I reply, "Get informed, get outraged, and then get political." ~ Joseph J. Romm

The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States. ~ James A. Michener

These facts about today's political climate in the United States, and what they imply, would have horrified Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams and all their friends. Whether they were atheists, agnostics, deists or Christians, they would have recoiled in horror from the theocrats of early 21st-century Washington. ~ Richard Dawkins

I've come to think that one reason for the oppressive predictability of polemical essays can be found in today's polarized social and political climate. To paraphrase Emerson: "If I know your party, I anticipate your argument." Not merely about politics but about everything. Clearly this acrimonious state of affairs is not conducive to writing essays that display independent thought and complex perspectives. Most of us open magazines, newspapers, and websites knowing precisely what to expect. Many readers apparently enjoy being members of the choir. In our rancorously partisan environment, conclusions don't follow from premises and evidence but precede them. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

Homelessness in the context of austerity-led welfare reforms involves more than concepts of accommodation and pathways in or out of homelessness. Seen in this way, a homeless person in the contemporary political climate can be understood through reference to the concept of the "Homo Sacer" (the "accused man") in Roman law. Homo Sacer is a person who is banned from Roman society and may be killed by Roman citizens and slaves, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual having been deemed impure for such ends. Therefore, one may argue that homeless people in the context of austerity politics are comparable to the Homo Sacer – i.e. a group who are punished by political practices and silenced from the political arena. ~ Bruno De Oliveira

I think tolerance is something everybody needs to be reminded of, especially in a reactionary political world. Well, actually, I should say, a reactionary political climate. ~ Bruce Davison

I don't believe that humans can be reduced to homo economicus, but as a group, government officials are remarkably sensitive to financial, political, and reputational costs. Thus, when new technologies appear to reduce the costs of using lethal force, their threshold for deciding to use lethal force correspondingly drops.
If killing a suspected terrorist in Yemen or Somalia or Libya will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is a an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually. ~ Rosa Brooks

These ministries have merged pseudo-science with religious beliefs to create, in effect, a new religion, ... Eventually they will collapse under the weight of their deceit. But as long as they survive we will have trouble winning any political battles. ~ Wayne Besen

Recall what used to be the theme of poetry in the romantic era. In neat verses the poet lets us share his private, bourgeois emotions: his sufferings great and small, his nostalgias, his religious or political pre-occupations, and, if he were English, his pipe-smoking reveries. On occasions, individual genius allowed a more subtle emanation to envelope the human nucleus of the poem - as we find in Baudelaire for example. But this splendour was a by-product. All the poet wished was to be a human being.
When he writes, I believe today's poet simply wishes to be a poet. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

We do not deny the possibility of peaceful [political] transition, but we are still awaiting the first case. ~ Fidel Castro

Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir. ~ Hiram Rhodes Revels

Oppression is the seed of power; you will plant it against yourself ~ Kamaran Ihsan Salih

What would a respectful political cartoon look like? ~ Salman Rushdie

When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it. Why do we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people? ~ John Boehner

The time has come for a public-private community partnership to fix this country and put it back to work. ~ Van Jones

The social model of the Bolsheviks failed, as will any model that denies individual rights, intellectual freedom, and freedom of competing political parties. Without these freedoms and rights, there is no motivation for people to work. Such a system cannot be sustained, especially in light of the technological revolution of the information era. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

Life meanwhile - real life, with its essential interests of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions - went on as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Movements in literature were not caricatures - in the sense that they actually functioned as an ideology in politics does. As now a monopolistic ideology in politics prevails in the literature as well a single movement prevails: that of networking as a literary quality. Quality = networking is the magic formula: take a Krijn Peter Hesselink, never managed to score a positive review but reviews are old news: it is only referential authority trickling down from that network pyramid that counts. Thus, nowadays its perfectly possible to be on top of the Pyramid without ever getting a positive review, or - even worse - I even see people rising in literary ranks that have never written any books at all. Ergo, your point that another ideology would make a 'caricature' of literary history is exactly the same reasoning used by neoliberals to deconstruct any political change: another ideology? Impossible, because they no longer exist, only we still exist.

In this way you get a pyramid shape you also see in popular music. It's still the bands from the 70's and 80's who earn the big money. New talent can't really play ball anymore. This of course embedded in a sauce of eternal talent shows, because the incumbent males have to just keep pretending they are everyone's benefactors. In the literature its the same: it is still Pfeijffer that gets the large sums of money from the Foundation of Literature, and it's still Samuel Vriezen pretending that that doesn't matter.

Martijn Benders

I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister. ~ Sara Sheridan

Communism in America
In the early 1920's, fascism was undermining all vestiges of democracy in Europe and dictatorships were prevalent in most Latin American countries. Therefore, communism was considered by many as the best alternative for the working masses, and was embraced by many scholars, artists and authors, as a viable alternative form of political thinking. Many people in the Hollywood film industry became members of the "Communist Party of America," or at least they agreed with the communistic views and became what was called "fellow travelers." The Communist Party meetings were where people of like mind could gather and share ideas, as well as help each other with their budding careers.
The United States Government had other ideas and some of the most serious attacks on personal rights took place during these early years. Constitutional rights were thrown out of the window as some government officials took unlawful actions against foreign immigrants and labor leaders.
Being more tolerant politically, Mexico attracted many Americans who felt persecuted in the United States. Heading south of the border was a geographic cure that many of them embraced. ~ Hank Bracker

I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" - the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation. ~ I. F. Stone

The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With all the grand opportunities around for the man with a political pull, there's no excuse for stealin' a cent. ~ George W. Plunkitt

If candidates spend money on ads and other political speech and their opponents are rewarded with government handouts to attack them, that chills speech and is unconstitutional. Non-participating candidates certainly don't volunteer to allow their opponents to receive taxpayer subsidies to bash them. ~ Bradley A. Smith

We often blame our government for their lack of responsibility, socially and politically. We forget that that is only a result of the societal irresponsibility in general. ~ Sunday Adelaja

For a century, Edison's light bulb was regarded as a beacon of American genius; then it became a 'climate criminal." That transformation is American decline in a nutshell. ~ Mark Steyn

Women exercise agency in order to survive the power relations and oppressive circumstances in which they find themselves. The theoretical task, Miriam argues, is for radical feminist theory to 'theorize freedom in terms of women's collective political agency (power to): this task requires an understanding that freedom is not negotiating within a situation taken as inevitable, but rather, a capacity to radically transform and/or determine the situation itself'. ~ Sheila Jeffreys

I'm working hard to be president of the United States.I'm running to change things, and I'm not going to be part of the political class in Washington, D.C. I have the skills to disrupt the old order and bring about a new culture. ~ Jeb Bush

Is humanity ready to look upon the roots of religion as it has looked into its political and scientific roots? Are people ready to strip away the fallacies like they have with humours for bacteria, virus, et cetera?
Can spirituality be given a chance to lie bare and naked, proudly strutting its stuff publicly? These are the questions that will render the verdict of whether one hears the call of the child (truth) and proclaim its message to the religious royalty, or whether humanity will cling to its "infallible" yet invisible messengers as if they currently cling to us as clothing. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

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

Now Brutus had deliberately assumed a mask to hide his true character. When he learned of the murder by Tarquin of the Roman aristocrats, one of the victims being his own brother, he had come to the conclusion that the only way of saving himself was to appear in the king's eyes as a person of no account. If there were nothing in his character for Tarquin to fear, and nothing in his fortune to covet, then the sheer contempt in which he was held would be a better protection than his own rights could ever be. Accordingly he pretended to be a half-wit and made no protest at the seizure by Tarquin of everything he possessed. He even submitted to being known publicly as the 'Dullard' (which is what his name signifies), that under cover of that opprobrious title the great spirit which gave Rome her freedom might be able to bide its time. On this occasion he was taken by Arruns and Titus to Delphi less as a companion than as a butt for their amusement; and he is said to have carried with him, as his gift to Apollo, a rod of gold inserted into a hollow stick of cornel-wood - symbolic, it may be, of his own character.
The three young men reached Delphi, and carried out the king's instructions. That done, Titus and Arruns found themselves unable to resist putting a further question to the oracle. Which of them, they asked, would be the next king of Rome? From the depths of the cavern came the mysterious answer: 'He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome su ~ Livy

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting against a common enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who has the right line.
Although i respected the work and political positions of many groups on the left, i felt it was necessary for Black people to come together and organize our own structures and our own politcal party ...
I felt, and still feel, that it is necessary for Black revolutionaries to come together, analyze our history, our present condition, and to define ourselves and our struggle. ~ Assata Shakur

I have been tested. I have beaten breast cancer. I have buried a child. I started as a secretary. I fought my way to the top of corporate America while being called every B word in the book. I fought my way into this election and on to this debate stage while all the political insiders and the pundits told, "it couldn't be done." ~ Carly Fiorina

I believe that if something like a political life is to remain for us in this world of technology, then it begins with friendship. Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. ~ Ivan Illich

There's no way in the world you're going to make a political party respectable unless you keep it out of office. ~ Will Rogers

If the great story of the last century was the conflict among various political ideologies-communism, fascism and democracy-then the great narrative of this century will be the changes wrought by astonishing scientific breakthroughs ~ Cynthia Tucker

Our middle class majority, deeply in personal debt, elects political leaders who increase our benefits. Then we vote them out because we dislike the soaring national debt. ~ Oliver DeMille

To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public. ~ William Empson

By uploading 40 years of 'Ecologist' editions online, we will be creating the world's most extensive ecological archive. 'The Ecologist' will continue to set the environmental and political agenda here and abroad. ~ Zac Goldsmith

[L]iberals insist that children should be given the right to remain part of their particular community, but on condition that they are given a choice. But for, say, Amish children to really have a free choice of which way of life to choose, either their parents' life or that of the "English," they would have to be properly informed on all the options, educated in them, and the only way to do what would be to extract them from their embeddedness in the Amish community, in other words, to effectively render them "English." This also clearly demonstrates the limitations of the standard liberal attitude towards Muslim women wearing a veil: it is deemed acceptable if it is their free choice and not an option imposed on them by their husbands or family. However, the moment a woman wears a veil as the result of her free individual choice, the meaning of her act changes completely: it is no longer a sign of her direct substantial belongingness to the Muslim community, but an expression of her idiosyncratic individuality, of her spiritual quest and her protest against the vulgarity of the commodification of sexuality, or else a political gesture of protest against the West. A choice is always a meta-choice, a choice of the modality of choice itself: it is one thing to wear a veil because of one's immediate immersion in a tradition; it is quite another to refuse to wear a veil; and yet another to wear one not out of a sense of belonging, but as an ethico-political choice. This is why, ~ Slavoj Zizek

The opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common moral purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which we as human beings are naturally vulnerable. ~ Al Gore

Sure it's a big job; but I don't know anyone who can do it better than I can. ~ John F. Kennedy