Political Quotes

Offence is so easily given. And where the 'minority' issue is involved, the rules seem to shift about: most of the time a person who is female/black/disabled/gay wants this not to be their defining characteristic; you are supposed to be blind to it. But then, on other occasions, you are supposed to observe special sensitivity, or show special respect. ~ Lynne Truss

The United States Constitution turned 225 years old in 2012. It is the central document of American history and politics. From all sides of the political spectrum, from ranks of society low and high, it is ceaselessly venerated, admired, and invoked. But all too seldom is it read. It sometimes seems that Americans worship the Constitution so deeply that they find its actual text a distraction. ~ Garrett Epps

I think that we have created a new kind of person in a way. We have created a child who will be so exposed to the media that he will be lost to his parents by the time he is 12. ~ David Bowie

What I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage. ~ Salman Rushdie

[I]t seems to me that a lot of the stranger ideas people have about medicine derive from an emotional struggle with the very notion of a pharmaceutical industry. Whatever our political leanings, we all feel nervous about profit taking any role in the caring professions, but that feeling has nowhere to go. Big pharma is evil; I would agree with that premise. But because people don't understand exactly how big pharma is evil, their anger gets diverted away from valid criticisms - its role in distorting data, for example, or withholding lifesaving AIDS drugs from the developing world - and channeled into infantile fantasies. "Big pharma is evil," goes the line of reasoning; "therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism." This is probably not helpful. ~ Ben Goldacre

It's time to step back and reexamine our hatred and let wrath subside. Are we striking out against the real problems: ignorance, fear, want, greed, and political disenfranchisement or just trying to find the most immediate scapegoat on which to lay the blame? Are we so busy blaming our fellow Hobbits that we've forgotten who is really behind the fouling of our Shire? Are we personally guilty of greed? Most of us are, to an extent. We need to reexamine our own desires, and make sure they are really needs instead of just wants. Poverty could be wiped out world wide, if enough modern Hobbits just said, "No! We will not stand for it anymore," or if those at the top of the economic ladder really wanted to do so. ~ Steve Bivans

The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation. The file of political detention must be closed. ~ Said Seyam

We should - we will - welcome people of faith into the political process ... It is essential that believers enter the arena. Your involvement in politics helps determine how well our democracy works. We have finally learned that government programs cannot solve our problems. Government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. ~ George W. Bush

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people. ~ Richard M. Nixon

They see in the political apathy of the proletariat only the apathy, not the protest against a system that has nothing to offer them. ~ Red Army Faction

Political events are part of everyday life [in Colombia], so art and politics came to me as a natural thing, something that has been very much present in my life from the start. ~ Doris Salcedo

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. ~ Gore Vidal

Another factor: Christianity offered opportunities for advancement in the church to intelligent young men, some of whom might otherwise have become mathematicians or scientists. Bishops and presbyters were generally exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, and from taxation. A bishop such as Cyril of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan could exercise considerable political power, much more than a scholar at the Museum in Alexandria or the Academy in Athens. This was something new. Under paganism religious offices had gone to men of wealth or political power, rather than wealth and power going to men of religion. For instance, Julius Caesar and his successors won the office of supreme pontiff, not as a recognition of piety or learning, but as a consequence of their political power. ~ Steven Weinberg

In 2006, the global economy was doing well. In India, the political and economic situation was stable. All key macroeconomic indicators reflected an economy that was in robust good health. ~ Baba Kalyani

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order. ~ Laura Kipnis

Only careful political manoeuvring will be able to manage the situation. ~ Davan Yahya Khalil

My efforts to prevent closing of the gold window-working through Connally, Volcker, and Shultz-do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be closed tomorrow because we now have a government that is incapable, not only of constructive leadership, but of any action at all. What a tragedy for mankind! ~ Arthur F. Burns

So if you hear something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in issues is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better.
Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.
My motto: Fuck Hope.
P.S. In case you're wondering, personally I'm a joyful individual, I had a long happy marriage and a close and loving family, my career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and it continues to expand. I'm a personal optimist, but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger, is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism–the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.
And P.P.S., by the way, if by some chance you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don't wish to be included. ~ George Carlin

It's time for our business and political leaders to help redefine morality beyond sex, drugs, and rock and roll to include lying, hypocrisy, and callous indifference to those in need. ~ Arianna Huffington

According to The Echo Nest, a "music intelligence start-up," your music-based Code Halos can tell much more about you than just what kind of music you like to listen to.14 They can also reveal your tastes in food, movies, and literature as well as your product preferences, political leanings, and even measures of intelligence. ~ Malcolm Frank

Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis. ~ Jurgen Habermas

I think as a consequence of that, there is also a fair amount of uncertainty about engaging in political activity that would be immediately suspect and seen as evidence as a sort of resurgent militancy. ~ Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

There are actually no political aspirations. I think you need to have the right attitude and aptitude for it. I don't think I have the right aptitude for it. I think it is unfair to push somebody in that direction just because my father happens to be a politician. ~ Sonakshi Sinha

Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. ~ Thomas Paine

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong ... This [is] mostly BS. ~ Jeffrey A. Miller

Of course in 1860, I had heard the political talk. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

It's time for somebody to lead all of America's niggers . all the people who feel left out of the political process. ~ Ron Dellums

A day of peace and sharing can lead to greater understanding and cooperation among political parties, faith groups, and people of different races and economic class. ~ John Conyers

Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. ~ Aldous Huxley

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. ~ Friedrich Hayek

In the political world, the only position I have is voter. I'm not a spokesman for anything. ~ Tommy Lee Jones

Political debate with liberals is basically impossible in America today because liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments. ~ Ann Coulter

Don't vote, it only encourages them. ~ Billy Connolly

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. ~ Aberjhani

One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Recognize that good economics cannot be divorced from good politics: this is perhaps a reason why the field of economics was known as political economy. ~ Anonymous

I claimed identity as Jewish musicians for political reasons, because most of us were touring in Germany and, at this time, twelve years ago, there was a strong resurgence of Nazism in the places we were touring and part of that was on the music scene. ~ Marc Ribot

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I think that is the fight that we have to wage if we're to save the middle class. And I do have doubts about whether Hillary Clinton or whether any Republican candidate out there is prepared to take on the big money interests who control so much of our economy and as a result of Citizens United, our political process as well. ~ Lindsey Graham

To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You're everywhere you look, you're the standard against which everyone else is measured. You're like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a "woman doctor" or they will say they went to see "the doctor." People will tell you they have a "gay colleague" or they'll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a "Black friend," but when that same person simply mentions a "friend," everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn't have the word "woman" or "gay" or "minority" in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses "literature," "history" or "political science."
This invisibility is political. ~ Michael S. Kimmel

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

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 personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty. She remains on the map for having seduced two of the greatest men of her time, while her crime was to have entered into those same "wily and suspicious" marital partnerships that every man in power enjoyed. She did so in reverse and in her own name; this made her a deviant, socially disruptive, an unnatural woman. To these she added a few other offenses. She made Rome feel uncouth, insecure, and poor, sufficient cause for anxiety without adding sexuality into the mix. ~ Stacy Schiff

I feel genuinely sorry for those who are so blinded by narrow partisanship that they cannot appreciate Limbaugh's energy, intelligence and satiric skill. They live in a box with bags over their heads. Though he and I hardly agree on politics (I voted for Ralph Nader last year and may go Green again in 2004), I respect Limbaugh as a political analyst and deft rhetorician who is a master of the microphone and who knows how to engage and challenge a vast audience. ~ Camille Paglia

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your custo ~ Steven Johnson

The doxology moves then to assert that Israel is forever and Yahweh's commitment to Israel is also forever. We had better approach any such doxology suspiciously.
The word "forever" is a clue word, because when it occurs we are likely dealing with state truth.23 That point would perhaps not be noticeable if Yahweh were forever. But it is the people Israel who are said to be "forever." By such a rhetorical move, the main jeopardy from the dreaded God has been removed for the dynasty. Yahweh has now been claimed as a friendly and reliable patron for the regime.
When doxology is used in the context of state truth, it has a political function. Ostensibly it enhances God, but when used as it is used here, it has a political function. Praise of God is by necessary implication praise of and legitimization of the regime. So the "foreverness" is processed as a dynastic claim. The ~ Walter Brueggemann

It is said that the price of freedom is vigilance, and an important form of vigilance is attention to political rhetoric, which often reveals how things are going. ~ Kenneth Minogue

Europe was not born in the early Middle Ages. No common identity in 1000 linked Spain to Russia, Ireland to the Byzantine empire (in what is now the Balkans, Greece and Turkey), except the very weak sense of community that linked Christian polities together. There was no common European culture, and certainly not any Europe-wide economy. There was no sign whatsoever that Europe would, in a still rather distant future, develop economically and militarily, so as to be able to dominate the world. Anyone in 1000 looking for future industrialization would have put bets on the economy of Egypt, not of the Rhineland and Low Countries, and that of Lancashire would have seemed like a joke. In politico-military terms, the far south-east and south-west of Europe, Byzantium and al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), provided the dominant states of the Continent, whereas in western Europe the Carolingian experiment (see below, Chapters 16 and 17) had ended with the break-up of Francia (modern France, Belgium and western Germany), the hegemonic polity for the previous four hundred years. The most coherent western state in 1000, southern England, was tiny. In fact, weak political systems dominated most of the Continent at the end of our period, and the active and aggressive political systems of later on in the Middle Ages were hardly visible.

National identities, too, were not widely prominent in 1000, even if one rejects the association between nationalism and modernity made in much contemp ~ Chris Wickham

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out. ~ Thom Yorke

And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests. ~ Edward Abbey

My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy. ~ Vandana Shiva

I have a story to tell. It is a tale for those who can still see, can still question.

A story of where you are and how you got here. A tale foretold by your poets and prophets through the ages. Read their words, their thoughts, so that you may understand. ~ W.H. Wisecarver

Forty of Paracelsus's theological manuscripts still survive, as well as sixteen Bible commentaries, twenty sermons, twenty works on the Eucharist, and seven on the Virgin Mary. Half of these have never been properly edited, let alone printed in modern form. There is no question that Paracelsus thought long and hard about Christianity, and by styling himself a professor of theology (without, it seems, any official academic sanction) he implies that he regarded this component of his output to be the equal of his medical and chemical theories. That his role in the history of science and medicine has received far more attention than his theological oeuvre is, however, understandable and probably apt, for it cannot be said that he had much influence even on the religious debates of his day. In theology he never aspired to be a Luther, and that would in any case have been a futile aspiration for one so lacking in political acumen or the ability to foster disciples. ~ Philip Ball

It has sustained me in moments of success and in moments of disappointment. Without it, I'd be a different person. And without it, I doubt I'd be here today. ~ George W. Bush

I'm very open about my politics. I don't believe in any political party at all, none of them. ~ John Lydon

In the early stages the sexual needs will have the upper hand, in later stages the compulsive moralistic inhibition. At times of political upheavals of the total social organization, the conflict between sexuality and compulsive morality becomes most acute. This will impress some people as the "collapse of morality," other people as "sexual revolution." At any rate, the idea of the "decline of culture" is the perception of the breakthrough of natural sexuality. The only reason why it is experienced subjectively as "decline" is the fact that it threatens the compulsive moralistic way of living. What happens objectively is only the downfall of the sexual dictatorship which maintains the compulsive moralistic forces in the individuals in the interest of authoritarian marriage and family. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Every fundamental order is a spatial order. One speaks of the constitution of a country or a piece of earth as of its fundamental order, its Nomos. Now, the true, actual fundamental order touches in its essential core upon particular spatial boundaries and separations, upon particular quantities and a particular partition of the earth. At the beginning of every great epoch there stands a great land-appropriation. In particular, every significant alteration and every resituating of the image of the earth is bound up with world-political alterations and with a new division of the earth, with a new land-appropriation. ~ Carl Schmitt

Rousseau's ideas brought about-he moved the political process to the very centre of human existence by making the legislator, who is also a pedagogue, into the new Messiah, capable of solving all human problems by creating New Men. 'Everything,' he wrote, 'is at root dependent on politics.' Virtue is the product of good government. 'Vices belong less to man, than to man badly governed.' The political process, and the new kind of state it brings into being, are the universal remedies for the ills of mankind.49 Politics will do all. Rousseau thus prepared the blueprint for the principal delusions and follies of the twentieth century. ~ Paul Johnson

In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for. ~ Paul Lutus

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. ~ Matt Taibbi

The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Citizens are starting not to excuse political candidates who have web sites that do nothing but throw virtual confetti. ~ David Weinberger

Had to pee like a racehorse at an Iced Tea convention. ~ Stephen Colbert

If somebody's dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they're going to have to take what they get. ~ Clint Eastwood

Fore more than a decade - from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s - conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime. Civil rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive 'lenience' toward lawlessness, thereby contributing to the spread of crime. ~ Michelle Alexander

Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Many of the pathologies that run through the carceral state also run through American politics today. They include the unwarranted reverence for nonpartisanship at all costs, the uncritical acceptance of neoliberalism in all aspects of public policy, the stranglehold that economic and financial interests exert on politics and policy-making, the growing political and economic disenfranchisement of wide swaths of the population, and the gross limitations of oppositional strategies formed primarily around identity-based politics. ~ Marie Gottschalk

I treat every student who walks through those doors the same because we are here to teach, if not political science, maybe a little something about critical thinking or even - gasp! - life. If students came to us fully formed and without insecurities, what would be the point? ~ Harlan Coben

In the 1980s ... it was a liberal philosophy of government that changed the rules to suit its own political ends. We were forfeiting our freedoms to conform to a humanistic philosophy that was patently antireligious. ~ James G. Watt

The Chinese public is deeply nationalist, which matters to China's unelected political leadership as much as U.S. nationalism does to American politicians. As China becomes the world's largest economy, there is meaningful public pressure for its power status to advance in parallel. Any alternative would be humiliating. ~ Noah Feldman

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect war may have on them. To assess these things in all their ramifications and diversity is plainly a colossal task. Rapid and correct appraisal of them clearly calls for the intuition of a genius; to master all this complex mass by sheer methodical examination is obviously impossible. Bonaparte was quite right when he said that Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems it could pose. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

I think the problems with comedians that are political, and there are some brilliant ones, are the ones that offer no solutions. Not that there's a moral obligation for a comic to fix things, but I like to see a comic that's upset about something and offer a solution. It can be a funny solution. I like to see the thought process. ~ Kyle Kinane

The whole apparatus of using loyalty-security hearings for working off personal political spite has been firmly established as a part of our "way of life" and I do not see anything happening yet to loosen the hold of this machinery on us. ~ Edward Condon

I think leadership of any kind requires trust and transparency and voters should demand no less from their political leadership in government. ~ Carly Fiorina

Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language. ~ Thomas Friedman

For those who fancy that government's projects are uniquely important, or for those who imagine that holding government office makes someone unusually saintly or trustworthy, entrusting government with power that we would never entrust to our neighbors or other private citizens might seem sensible. To me, it's dangerous, unjustified, and unjustifiable. ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

On the contrary, a trust in the staying power and travel-worthiness of such good should encourage us to credit the possibility of a world where respect for the validity of every tradition
will issue in the creation and maintenance of a salubrious political space. ~ Seamus Heaney

Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's kIng. This is the root of self-government in the English-speaking world. ~ Sarah Vowell

The energy I was sensing in audiences was political energy, as much as anything else. ~ Michael Pollan

The emergence of one world consciousness must be accompanied with one world political infrastructures. ~ Bryant McGill

All political systems favour the powerful rich over the defenceless poor. ~ Gregory David Roberts

One should not study what is best, but also what is possible, and similarly what is easier and more attainable by all. ~ Aristotle.

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police & military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means ... Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political " ju-jitsu " and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed. ~ Gene Sharp

The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy. ~ Juan Williams

The other salient characteristic of the Declaration is its universality: it applies to all human beings without any discrimination whatever; it also applies to all territories, whatever their economic or political regime. ~ Rene Cassin

Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts. ~ Henry Kissinger

George Bush's political, intellectual and other shortcomings cannot be restricted to one sentence. ~ Emilio Botin

The Occupied Territories; you think there is absolutely no way you can get to it. Do you see how close it is? How touchable? How real?

When the eye sees it, it has all the clarify of earth and pebbles and hills and rocks. It has its colours and its temperatures and its wild plants too.

Who would dare to make it into an abstraction now that it has declared its physical self to the senses?

It is no longer 'the beloved' in the poetry of resistance, or an item on a political party program, and it is not an argument or a metaphor. It stretches before me, as touchable as a scorpion, a bird, a well; visible as a field of chalk, as the prints of shoes.

I asked myself, what is so special about it except that we have lost it? It is a land, like any land.

We sing for it only so that we may remember the humiliation of having had it taken from us. Our song is not for some sacred thing of the past but for our current self-respect that is violated anew every day by the Occupation. ~ Mourid Barghouti

The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They
always did ... they always will. They will have the same effect here as
elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper
spheres. ~ Gouverneur Morris

Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach, of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders, particularly the president. ~ Ron Fournier

A statement on the political responsibility of the critic: the critic must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for, the unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present. ~ Homi K. Bhabha

[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion. ~ Anton Chekhov

An arc of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

It's certainly possible to write fiction that isn't trivial and isn't what people would call political, but it is very hard to figure out how, because our ordinary lives have such a strong tincture now of the whole world. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

Rev. Pat Robertson says that if more states legalize gay marriage, God will destroy America. He did say that afterwards, gays will come in and do a beautiful renovation. ~ Conan O'Brien

Corporations are poisoning our air and water while at the same time lining the pockets of elected officials with political contributions. ~ Gloria Reuben

We need many more intrepid women who set out to expand both their and our concepts of the world. We need them in writing just as we need them in politics. We need that sense of adventure, of reaching wider, delving deeper, pushing further afield, whether that field be geographical, intellectual, political, personal, or all of these and more. Enough with decorousness. Let us risk preconceptions and treasured philosophies, bodies and souls. Let us be big and bawdy and full of courage. Let's go. ~ Lesley Hazleton

If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste of time. ~ Steven Pinker

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