Political Indecision Quotes

There is no middle ground for moral choice and political decision because by being on a safe side, any indecisive act poses a moral hazard to the individual freedom and integrity of a democratic society.

~ Danny Castillones Sillada, The Postmodern Filipino Prince: The Moral Hazard of Political Indecision ~ Danny Castillones Sillada

Depoliticization involves removing a political phenomenon from comprehension of its historical emergence and from a recognition of the powers that produce and contour it. No matter its particular form and mechanics, depoliticization always eschews power and history in the representation of its subject. When these two constitutive sources of social relations and political conflict are elided, an ontological naturalness or essentialism almost inevitably takes up residence in our understandings and explanations. In the case at hand, an object of tolerance analytically divested of constitution by history and power is identified as naturally and essentially different from the tolerating subject; in this difference, it appears as a natural provocation to that which tolerates it. Moreover, not merely the parties to tolerance but the very scene of tolerance is naturalized, ontologized in its constitution as produced by the problem of difference itself. ~ Wendy Brown

I want to talk about political and economic fairy tales. ~ Ronald Reagan

I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces. ~ Dan Rather

The United States is such a potent political, cultural, and economic model in the evocation of the contemporary world, that to come here, select some elements from the prototype and rearrange them, that's really interesting artistically. ~ Bruno Dumont

They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that 'one man is as good as another;' a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory. ~ James F. Cooper

A transitional government is the beginning of a transfer of sovereignty. It's a question of Iraqi security and moving forward with the political process. ~ Joschka Fischer

It continues to startle me, the range of political ideologies that are compatible with enthusiasm for spaceflight. Tax-and-spend liberals of the Great Society stripe, obviously - but also spending-slashing Tea Partiers, hippie peaceniks, fierce libertarians, military loyalists, and apathetics of every shade. So very many of us seem to feel that a love of human spaceflight is reconcilable with our beliefs, and we can all explain why. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

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

Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led. ~ Thomas Carlyle

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new ... ~ Edmund Burke

War is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations - war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

As a Coalition Government, we inherited a legacy of lack of trust and confidence in political system. ~ Andrew Lansley

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[In politics] no good deed goes unpunished ~ Clare Boothe Luce

In Bangladesh, if you put a kiss in a film, it's political. ~ Sarah Gavron

John Knox's dying words were, 'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy kirk.' Such was the last prayer of a great man without whom there would have been no America, no Puritans, no Pilgrims, no Scottish covenanters, no Presbyterians, no Patrick Henry, no Samuel Adams, no George Washington. Could it have been so simple? John Knox's agenda was far from political. All he wanted were more pastors and elders. This is our agenda. Lord grant true pastors to Thy church! ~ Kevin Swanson

Hip-hop music has done a very good job of maintaining the political context, where they stand and not giving a sh-t what people think. ~ Conor Oberst

I'd dearly love to write a political book that changed the hearts and minds of men and women. ~ Jim Crace

Perhaps we should worry less about judging people for being Mormon or Baptist or Muslim or gay or straight or black or white or Latino or by their religious or political brands and worry more about electing thoughtful, serious and ethical politicians on both sides of the political isle who are willing to work together for progress. ~ Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick

A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation. ~ Stephen Crane

To discover how much of our resources must be mobilized for war, we must first examine our political aim and that of the enemy. We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposite state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people and do the same in regard to our own. Finally, we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

I was one of the actors in 'Braveheart,' and that had a huge impact on the political scene in Scotland. One of the results of that, in 2014 there's going to be a referendum in Scotland as to whether Scotland is going to be independent. A great deal of that was brought to the nation as a result of 'Braveheart.' ~ James Cosmo

Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. ~ John Howard Yoder

What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power. ~ Thomas Paine

We Kurd must do everything in our power to create structures which prevent the repeat of mass murder by our adversaries,
And It's better to call for independence. ~ Davan Yahya Khalil

She explained why all the normal acts of life had become small acts of rebellion and political insubordination to her and to other young people like her. All her life she was shielded. She was never let out of sight; she never had a private corner in which to think, to feel, to dream, to write. She was not allowed to meet any young men on her own. Her family not only instructed her on how to behave around men - they seemed to think they could tell her how she should feel about them as well. What seems natural to someone like you, she said, is so strange and unfamiliar to me. ~ Azar Nafisi

what fuels human unhappiness in both the personal and political realm can be boiled down to these three key emotions - anxiety, fear, and shame. ~ Harriet Lerner

The more doubtful the political outlook the fiercer will be the dogmas which men create and contend for. ~ John Buchan

I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

Now, part of the problem with the climate debate is that so much gas board language like that [the IPCC's language] has been used and there's been too little plain, scientific, and economic thinking. And so, the entire political class has been captured by an idea, which as always with the best bad ideas has a grain of truth in it, which is then exaggerated beyond all reason. This has happened before - one thinks of the Dreyfus case, for instance. ~ Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley

I believe that women should have equal rights to education, to work and to civic and political engagement. ~ Rashid Al-Ghannushi

The morality of a [political] party must grow out of the conscience and the participation of the voters. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

We may regard totalitarianism as a process of the annihilation of individuality, but, in more fundamental terms, it is the annihilation, first, of those social relationships within which individuality develops. It is not the extermination of individuals that is ultimately desired by totalitarian rulers, for individuals in the largest number are needed by the new order. What is desired is the extermination of those social relationships which, by their autonomous existence, must always constitute a barrier to the achievement of the absolute political community. The individual alone is powerless. Individual will and memory, apart from the reinforcement of associative tradition, are weak and ephemeral. How well the totalitarian rulers know it. (…) To destroy or diminish the reality of the smaller areas of society, to abolish or restrict the range of cultural alternatives offered individuals by economic endeavor, religion, and kinship, is to destroy in time the roots of the will to resist despotism in its large forms. ~ Robert A. Nisbet

In accordance with the prevailing tendency of consciousness to seek the source of all ills in the outside world, the cry goes up for political and social changes which, it is supposed, would automatically solve the much deeper problem of split personality. Hence it is that whenever this demand is fulfilled, political and social conditions arise which bring the same ills back again in altered form. ~ C. G. Jung

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289) ~ Azar Nafisi

A critical function that we journalists perform at political conventions is to try to get into parties that we have not been invited to. There are dozens of these parties, sponsored by large corporations with a sincere public-spirited desire to become larger. ~ Dave Barry

Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation. ~ Daniel Berrigan

You never see the entire script of political theater until long after the last scene has been acted out. ~ Gary Hopkins

We are each other's seventh largest trading partner, we are the fifth largest investor there and likewise, we have a lot of exchanges between political leaders, businessmen, tourists and school children too. ~ Sellapan Ramanathan

Extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome. ~ George H. W. Bush

My first big gig was as a correspondent on Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show.' My job was to parody TV reporters and political pundits. As a result, I was often invited onto cable news shows as comic relief. ~ Beth Littleford

Politics should be for people, politics shouldn't be for politicians. ~ Amit Kalantri

My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art. ~ Thom Yorke