Political Judgement Quotes

Ignoring the vices of our friends and the virtues of our enemies sets us up for nasty surprises. ~ Philip E. Tetlock

Thus it is thought that justice is equality; and so it is, but not for all persons, only for those that are equal. Inequality also is thought to be just; and so it is, but not for all, only for the unequal. We make bad mistakes if we neglect this for whom when we are deciding what is just. The reason is that we are making judgements about ourselves, and people are generally bad judges where their own interests are involved. ~ Aristotle.

I question the political judgement of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair. ~ John Henrik Clarke

The decline of religious belief,which has all sorts of effects on morals and even on politics because religion has been a tool of politics. But today in Europe it ceases to be a tool, it has very little influence in determining political decisions - ~ Will Durant

The genius of the Republicans has been how they figured out how to so polarize the middle class that we vote against our own best interests. ~ Patricia Schroeder

I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction. ~ Paul Krugman

I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me. ~ Tracey Ullman

I think you have a social responsibility as the villain, which is pretty different from the hero's responsibility. If you have any kind of a social or political conscience at all, the first thing you want to do is make malevolence recognizable to people, almost as a kind of teaching aid. ~ Peter Coyote

I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. ~ Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Public life drives out private life. The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of 'political' - the obsessions, the compulsions of collectivity) the more individuality seems lost. … [N]ational purpose is now involved with the manufacture of commodities in no way essential to human life, but vital to the political survival of the country. … The whole matter … has to do with invasion of the private sphere (including the sexual) by techniques of exploitation and domination. ~ Saul Bellow

The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke. ~ David Simon

The key difference between foot voting and ballot box voting is that foot voters don't have the same incentive to be rationally ignorant as ballot box voters do. In fact, they have strong incentives to seek out useful information. They also have much better incentives to objectively evaluate what they do learn. Unlike political fans, foot voters know they will pay a real price if they do a poor job of evaluating the information they get...
The informational advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting strengthen the case for limiting and decentralizing government. The more decentralized government is, the more issues can be decided through foot voting. It is usually much easier to vote with your feet against a local government than a state government, and much easier to do it against a state than against the federal government.
It is also usually easier to foot vote in the private sector than the public. A given region is likely to have far more private planned communities and other private sector organizations than local governments. Choosing among the former usually requires far less in the way of moving costs than choosing among the latter.
Reducing the size of government could also alleviate the problem of ignorance by making it easier for rationally ignorant voters to monitor its activities. A smaller, less complicated government is easier to keep track of. ~ Ilya Somin

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests. ~ C. Wright Mills

People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world - even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren't supposed to change? Who made that rule? ~ Ellen Wittlinger

If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgement, to common sense, or why they would say "I know, I know" when I urged a little reasonableness on them, and why it meant "It doesn't matter, I just don't care." That's what the saints and the martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true. I remember in those days loving God for the existence of love and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude, right down in the depths of my misery. I realized many things that I am at a loss to express. And of course those feelings become milder with time, which is a mercy. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Really proud of it. A great campaign. And I'm really pleased with the organization and the thousands of South Carolinians that worked on my behalf. And I'm very gracious and humbled. ~ George W. Bush

If a culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, as a healing crisis and opportunity. Being sick is then not a condemnation or a moral judgement, but a movement in a larger process of healing and restoration. When sickness is viewed positively and in supportive terms, then illness has a much better chance to heal, with the concomitant result that the entire person may grown and be enriched in the process. ~ Ken Wilber

I didn't deserve this. Even the most confused and lost girl, even the most screwed up of us all, doesn't deserve this. Death isn't the consequence for making a mistake; it's the punishment we force on girls because they couldn't be good. Only girls have to die for wanting. ~ T.E. Carter

Trees are right at the heart of all the necessary debates: ecological, social, economic, political, moral, religious. ~ Colin Tudge

It is only when women start to organize in large numbers that we become a political force, and begin to move towards the possibility of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave, responsible, thinking and diligent in the struggle to live at once freely and unselfishly. Such a democracy would be communism, and is beyond our present imagining. ~ Sheila Rowbotham

The virtue of tolerance is relatively new to political debate; Aristotle did not discuss it. From the way the debate is usually framed, however, one gets the impression that all one has to do to achieve tolerance is to avoid the vice of narrowminded repressiveness. On the contrary, like other virtues, tolerance is opposed by not one vice but two, with grave dangers in each direction.5 The diagram should look not like this: Intolerance Tolerance but like this: Narrowminded Repressiveness - Tolerance - Soft-headed Indulgence ~ J. Budziszewski

Everybody is entitled to believe. Churches have exactly the same right to exist as a football club, a trade union or a political party. But if you and I set up the Church of the Fairies of the Garden, then I don't think we should automatically be meeting the queen, be entitled to seats in the House of Lords or get public money for our fairy schools. ~ A.C. Grayling

Charging commercial institutions with failure to educate public taste is an indulgence from which intellectuals will only be deterred when they grasp that a non-existant contract can be neither breached nor enforced. If commerce is to be indicted for anything, it can only be for commercialism, and whether that is a crime or not is a political question. ~ Colin Watson

Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day, when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and mayhem in our society, not subjectivism in theology, not dispensationalism, not cultural relativism, not licentiousness, not defection from the New Testament, not defection from the Westminster Confession of Faith, all of which are out there and they can give their legitimate efforts to ... boy the thing they had to write about was theonomy! How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he doesn't see the problem? ~ Greg L. Bahnsen

It's too bad about 'Dark of the Sun.' It was really about Tshombe. When I read the script, I thought it was going to be a political movie, and I thought we might even have a hassle. But the director simplified it to brutality and bad taste. ~ Jim Brown

I believe, for a long time, protracted wars test the will of any democracy, to be sure, and people will underwrite a protracted war if they see some progress. But if they don't see progress, and it appears to be futile and useless, then that political support begins to evaporate rather quickly. ~ Jack Keane

We will allow private and religious groups to compete to provide services in every federal, state and local social program. ~ George W. Bush

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity. ~ Oscar Wilde

Political Islam is not a homogeneous bloc. ~ Alvaro De Vasconcelos

The point of Political Correctness is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself. (The Rise of Political Correctness) ~ Angelo Codevilla

Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly. ~ John Adams

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism. ~ P.D. James

There will, in my view, come a time when there has to be some kind of political denouement inside China, because the newly enriched generation might put up with being told what to do by their rulers - but their children, who will take prosperity for granted, will not. ~ John Howard

In my opinion, most of us have not been taught how to be responsible for our thoughts and feelings. I see this strongly in the widespread tendency to read books and stories as if they exist to confirm how we are supposed to be, think, and feel. I'm not talking about wacky political correctness, I'm talking mainstream ... Ladies and gentlemen, please. Stop asking, "What am I supposed to feel?" Why would an adult look to me or any other writer to tell him or her what to feel? You're not supposed to feel anything. You feel what you feel. Where you go with it is your responsibility. If a writer chooses to aggressively let you know what he or she feels, where you go with it is still your responsibility. ~ Mary Gaitskill

There is no company - no corporation on earth that engages in accounting fraud to the extent the Imperial Federal Government of the United Sates does. Not many congressmen are willing to come forward with the details. ~ Neal Boortz

President Obama decided to prematurely withdraw from Iraq for no other reason than politics. The artificial deadline for withdrawal was not determined for strategic goals but rather for a political one - his reelection timetable. ~ Michael Ramirez

Success of democracy lies within the analytical thought of a common man. ~ M.H. Rakib

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach. ~ William Cowper

Random political acts produce random political results. Why waste even a rock? ~ Abbie Hoffman

The war we have to wage today has only one goal and that is to make the world safe for diversity. ~ U Thant

Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world. ~ Thomas Sowell

It would be interesting to go to Buckingham Palace. I'd just like to see what goes on - I'm not bothered about hearing any political chat. ~ Pauline Quirke

Some political spouses are much more comfortable on the campaign trail than others, and they take to it a lot more naturally. ~ Monica Crowley

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

From that point on, the extraordinary system of spies and informers which has played an important part in the political work of the French state into our own time took shape. (Sartine, who became lieutenant general de police in 1759, is supposed to have said to Louis XV, "Sire, when three people are chatting in the street one of them is surely my man.") Eighteenth-century police manuals like those of Colquhoun in England or Lemaire in France are no less than general treatises on the government's full repertoire of domestic regulation, coercion, and surveillance. ~ Charles Tilly

Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. ~ Thomas Jefferson

However carefully a judge is protected by the experience and the logic of the law, there must be times -not many, I know, or we should have no judges- when the same frightful question must be answered. Not faced, you see, but answered. Every now and again he must have to say to himself, in effect, Everyone agrees that this colour is black, and my reason tells me it is so, but on my soul, do I know? ~ Margery Allingham

Let's get with it, guys: You don't need to hear a Ministry song to get political. You should be political on your own. We're just a side project to society. So do I care what people think about me personally? No. I just do what I do. ~ Al Jourgensen