Political Fiction Quotes

As far as I'm concerned, you're changing the fate of another human being. Maybe he isn't meant to be elected to office. Maybe humans deserve to live with electing the wrong person. ~ Evette Davis

It is easier to start a war than to end it. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Republicans here in Concord and down in Washington D.C. would have us believe that the War on Women is a phony war. Michele Bachmann and Fox News would have us believe that the whole thing is 'political fiction.' ~ Ann McLane Kuster

It's common knowledge in the industry that people often lie, or minimize things, when they participate in surveys, No one wants to tell a stranger they drink four cocktails a night, or eat junk food for every meal. It's the same with their views on candidates and political issues. Most people won't tell you they don't like someone when they have to look you in the eye. None of that would matter for me, though, because I would know their true emotions whether they shared them or not. ~ Evette Davis

I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur. ~ Donna Tartt

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

Capital dictates the fate of humanity. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

There are some corrupt Christians who do their business with female donkeys. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Whether I'll get the chance to write fiction, I don't know. I could do political conspiracy thrillers, couldn't I? With an investigative journalist as the heroine. ~ Heather Brooke

The expression 'three is a crowd' holds true for both romance and politics. A three-way race is a disaster, because it splits the ballots, making it almost impossible to gain a majority of the votes. It usually results in a runoff. ~ Evette Davis

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael's middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my spine, and the fingers of my right hand were soon exploring his left hand, and we each took turns tracing the contours of the other's hands. ~ Zack Love

The Israel stories were really hard for me to write, because I think that my book is very much about politics, but it isn't political. It really was important for me to not have a political agenda at all, because I have a hard time stomaching any political fiction that feels message-y. ~ Molly Antopol

For a moment, I felt sorry for him. The pain and disappointment of his life hung about him like a cloak. It permeated the air, giving him a rank and bitter scent. This, I mused, was an example of human betrayal left festering, and I felt some compassion for the man whose life had been so disturbed by his wife's ambitions and dishonesty. ~ Evette Davis

...she certainly was one of the best proofreaders around, and knew her way around there, their, and they're. ~ Sara Branmore

Watching From Withing protagonist Dr. Jesse Baine says, "The only place I can fathom that is truly private is the space between your ears. Think about the sheer number of surveillance systems, automated ID tracking and police brain-print scanners. What is privacy anyhow? And, why would anyone protest the advancement of such tried and true [surveillance] technology? That's a bit like rising-up against the aspirin!" -Daniel LaMonte ~ Daniel LaMonte

They [anarchists and radical environmentalists] point out that the state and its philosophers, having retrospectively sold us a social contract we never saw nor signed, seem anyway to have reneged on their side of the bargain which was to protect our lives and liberties. The new institutionally guaranteed 'freedoms', to democracy, free speech, individual liberty, so dearly brought, constantly fail to live up to expectation. What does it mean to have political freedom when the parties on offer are ideologically identical clones? What kind of intellectual freedom is it that brands all those who dare to think differently dangerous extremists? What kind of individuality expects us all to conform within such narrow limits? What freedoms are even possible when the very air we breathe is poisoned and the food we eat contaminated with the so-called 'by-products' of progress? In such circumstances, it is surely not surprising that some might choose the dream of pre-contractual state of natural innocence to the increasingly nightmarish 'reality' of Locke's post-contractual culture. ~ Mick Smith

Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

My days are filled with you, and for that I am more grateful than you could ever know ~ Kennedy Vega

I would have liked to experience more of the heptapods' worldview, to feel the way they feel. Then, perhaps I could immerse myself fully in the necessity of events, as the must, instead of merely wading in its surf for the rest of my life. ~ Ted Chiang

Dawn wore a pink dress and crept across the land like a timid girl. Her sister Morning followed, dressed in blue, the sun a dazzling locket on her breast. ~ Robert F. Young

I really do believe that mayors have the political position to really change people's lives. ~ Eduardo Paes

I think that compared to other politicians who have been put in jail in the past, compared to the human-rights activists in history who have had to face political prosecution, the activists in Hong Kong nowadays are already quite lucky compared to that. ~ Joshua Wong

Non-fiction about personal subjects is going to attract more user comments than a foreign correspondent writing from Syria - unfortunately. ~ Meghan Daum

New York City is finished," he said. "They can't keep order there, and you can't have business without order. It'll take a hundred years to sort things out and get it all going again."
"What do you hear of the U.S. government? I said. "We don't have electricity an hour a month anymore and there's nothing on the air but the preachers anyway."
"Well, I hear that this Harvey Albright pretends to be running things out of Minneapolis now. It was Chicago, but that may have gone by the boards. Congress hasn't met since twelve twenty-one." Ricketts said, using a common shorthand for the destruction of Washington a few days before Christmas some years back. "We're still fighting skirmishes with Mexico. The Everglades are drowning. Trade is becoming next to impossible, from everything I can tell, and business here is drying up. It all seems like a bad dream. The future sure isn't what it used to be, is it?"
"We believe in the future, sir. Only it's not like the world we've left behind," Joseph said.
"How's that?"
"We're building our own New Jerusalem up the river. it's a world made by hand, now, one stone at a time, one board at a time, one hope at a time, one soul at a time. . . ~ James Howard Kunstler

My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane. ~ F.K. Preston

The critical scene of the mystery is when the detective enters. The action shifts to Sherlock's sitting room. The little Belgian man with the waxed moustache appears in the lobby of the grand hotel. The gentle old woman with a bag of knitting comes to visit her niece when the poison pen letters start going around the village. The private detective comes back to the office after a night of drinking and finds the woman with the cigarette and the veiled hat this is when things will change. ~ Maureen Johnson

When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay. ~ Lois Lowry

I'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se. ~ Philippe Falardeau

Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US - be a fiction? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. ~ H.L. Mencken

I contend that one is likely to find more truth in fiction. A good painting after all is more truthful than a photograph. Remember that, Young Messenger, for all your days. ~ Vince Vawter

Just how common do such savageries have to be for a decent person to be unable to overlook them? If you knew that one in one thousand food animals suffered actions like those described above, would you continue to eat animals? One in one hundred? One in ten? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Still the myth stands, does it, hmmm? Black cats are bad luck, are they? ~ Trevor Alan Foris

The touch of chaos in the order - art required that. ~ Melissa Marr

I'm terrified to pose this next question, but I need to know. "Do you feel differently about me now?"
His face softens. "You're still you. The same girl I fell in love with. Nothing has changed. ~ Siobhan Davis

The thing about Iran is there are many political factions and it's not quite the dictatorial, authoritarian state with one person always making every single decision ... ~ Hooman Majd

There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don't recognise what I do is crime fiction. ~ John Connolly

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man's done and you want him to be a hero at the same time! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

By the time they were done, America's progressive and radical movements, which had given the country the middle class and opened up our political system, did not exist. It was upon the corpses of these radical movements, which had fought for the working class, that the corporate state was erected in the late twentieth century. ~ Chris Hedges

Lord help the girl he set those eyes on for good. His boyish vulnerability was a weapon, powerful and disarming. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

I'll gloss right over the implication in what you said that the Reor are sentient entities - for now. Dare I ask why they gave you a copy of their universal decryption key?"

Alex and Caleb shared a look, and she shrugged. "We can only speculate, but it's possible they want us to win."

Miriam dropped her elbows on the table. "Hmm. Okay. In that case, I welcome the minerals to our side of the fight. ~ G.S. Jennsen

When you make choices, please remember: what is good for you but not good for others won't be good for you either, eventually; what's good for you and others but not good for the Earth won't be good for you or others either, eventually; what's good for you, others, and the Earth will be good for all. ~ Ilchi Lee

The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians. ~ William Gilmore Simms

The dictator State has one great advantage over bourgeois reason: along with the individual it swallows up his religious forces. The State takes the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship. But the religious function cannot be dislocated and falsified in this way without giving rise to secret doubts, which are immediately repressed so as to avoid conflict with the prevail trend towards mass-mindedness. […] The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honoured as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic, who, as we know from history, is threatened with all manner of unpleasant things. Only the party boss, who holds the political power in his hands, can interpret the State doctrine authentically, and he does so just as suits him. ~ C.G. Jung

Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields. ~ Gunnar Myrdal

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel. ~ Dean Koontz

I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at. ~ Kenny Smith

The cornerstone of the political correctness that dominates campus culture is radical feminism. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

Writers of historical fiction would be lost without libraries and archives. ~ Ruta Sepetys

Let us remind our leaders that there is no place for personal interests in politics. ~ Mohith Agadi

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving.
He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but faint breeze pushed the smoke away from him and dissipated it into nothing. He still felt angry about the run-in with Gonzalez. It had consistently poked at him like a curious sadist with a pointed stick ever since he walked away from the door slammed in his face. ~ J.C. Joranco

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party. ~ Franz Kafka

Ladles and Jellyspoons, all rise for...'TRIUMPHʼ. And by Jupiter what a triumph it is! ...
For yet again the unfeasibly huge, nay the monstrously Gigantic, creative genius of the
inimitable Mr. Greg Broadmore, delivers us from evil. Expanding the universe
according to Dr.Grordbort, which teems with its ever growing cast of splendiferous
characters, creatures, and (most importantly) weapons, and is led by the greatest
bombast in the history of fiction, Lord Cockswain himself, GBʼs latest tome of
magnificence once more separates the mere pretender from the true originator of
fantasy art. This outing has me feeling that we have reached a tipping point in the
evolution of the oeuvre, where we cannot BUT believe that this world is real, that these
microscopically detailed inventions are not fanciful conceptual constructs, but an
authentic a depiction as any of our Glorious past, present... and perhaps our future. ~ Andy Serkis

We are involved now in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is the party of principles? ~ John Lewis

The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning. ~ Max Weber

Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

In Gothic fiction, characters must contend with the dead, with active hauntings or with hallucinations of hauntings, as well as whatever other trying circumstances they might find themselves in: orphanhood, lunacy, imprisonment, inheritances that go astray, troubling romantic situations. The Gothic novel does not strive for subtlety, and it isn't to everyone's taste. It can seem adolescent, an immature version of the stately, measured, grown-up realist novel, except that the line between Gothic and the realist is never clear. A disdain for the Gothic is limiting, since this literature, in all its flagrancy, has something to say about emotional as well as physical death, and a tale of a haunting can have a narrative vitality that is far from conclusive. Gothic stories linger especially in the mind. ~ Brenda Walker

Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses." ~ Gore Vidal

And in America, when the state cultivates such fear among relatively empowered white voters, it is enriching uranium for a political nuclear weapon. It ~ Chris Hayes

The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument. ~ Newt Gingrich

Once upon a time there was war, and starvation, and death. Once upon a time we would kill our brothers and sisters, fearing for our own lives. Once upon a time the characters turned from us, and we wept. Now we do not war, nor do we fear, nor do we weep. We Redact. ~ F.D. Lee