Political Statement Quotes

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing. ~ Mohsin Hamid

When you put gas in your car you are making a political statement, because you are supporting the empires that control and continue the destruction of some countries. ~ Javier Bardem

It's not what my job is about. I'm not out to make a political statement. I want to stand for something, but more by example. ~ Lauren Bush

A fart is not only a political statement; it is also a weapon. ~ Bridget Christie

I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement. ~ Yiyun Li

Like I told you, I'm not interested. I think the party is mostly a means of advancing one's career anyway."

"Exactly, and your decision not to join is a political decision."

"Well, then my political decision is to not be political."

"Exactly, that's a political statement. You are expressing your opinion about current politics. Except you are political, everything we do is political…"

"It's a practical decision, not a political one… We don't have to analyze everyone's lives for motives."

"I wasn't saying it's wrong… I was just pointing out that your life says something about your politics whether you think about them or not. You can either just let that happen or you can think about the kind of choices you want to make."

"I'd like to continue to make my choices because they fit my life rather than out of some sense of ideology… In my experience ideology is a lot like religion; it's a belief system and most people cling to it long after it becomes clear that their ideology doesn't describe the real world…"

"That's as pure a description of an applied political theory as any I've ever heard. ~ Maureen F. McHugh

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church. ~ Margaret George

And realising that humour is the most powerful way to make a political statement and say the things that you want to say. And it's not used enough, at least not in the U.S. ~ Michael Moore

Kyle worked in technology; he knew it would only be a matter of time before the video of Daniela and the A-list actor went viral and spread everywhere. So he did what any pissed-off, red-blooded computer geek would do after catching his girlfriend giving an underwater blowjob to another man: he hacked into Twitter and deleted both the video and her earlier tweet from the site. Then, raging at the world that had devolved so much in civility that 140-character breakups had become acceptable, he shut down the entire network in a denial-of-service attack that lasted two days.

And so began the Great Twitter Outage of 2011.

The Earth nearly stopped on its axis.

Panic and mayhem ensued as Twitter unsuccessfully attempted to counteract what it deemed the most sophisticated hijacking they'd ever experienced. Meanwhile, the FBI waited for either a ransom demand or political statement from the so-called "Twitter Terrorist." But neither was forthcoming, as the Twitter Terrorist had no political agenda, already was worth millions, and had most inconveniently taken off to Tijuana, Mexico to get shit-faced drunk on cheap tequila being served by an eight-fingered bartender named Esteban. ~ Julie James

I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it. ~ Arundhati Roy

Love is a human experience, not a political statement. ~ Anne Hathaway

One night I walked out of the church when the priest said that we should never have fought the Revolutionary war and every war was bad. It was 4th of July. It was an outrageously political statement. I just never felt right when people in the church would take these overtly political positions especially when I felt like I was a good Christian, I was serving my country, and I just didn't feel like I deserved to be lambasted by the priest on the 4th of July. ~ Wesley Clark

I already feel that I am making a political statement by sticking around in music, when I am doing it so differently to everyone else. ~ M.I.A.

At Woodstock, we would focus our energy on peace, setting aside the onstage discussion of political issues to just groove on what might be possible. It was a chance to see if we could create the kind of world for which we'd been striving throughout the sixties: That would be our political statement - proving that peace and understanding were possible and creating a testament to the value of the counterculture.
It would be three days of peace and music. ~ Uwe Michael Lang

This book does not try to "document" any particular aspect of Indian life. To me, doing such a thing would seem a pretentious and pseudo-scientific undertaking, especially for someone from the West. The photographs also make no intentional social or political statement. I never say, when discussing my work, that I am "concerned" with anything (another favorite word tossed about, all too much, by young and socially conscious post-modernists). ~ Waswo X. Waswo

We're all living blinkered lives, and we're not seeing what's going on and looking to change it. I'm not saying that everyone has to make a political statement, but we need to be more aware of what's happening and why. ~ Samantha Morton

Me as a woman liking myself, is an act of social defiance! ~ Hannah Witton

I didn't want to do an electro-class album or complex rap album. I wanted to do something that was kind of like a political statement, but also club jams. I wanted it to be dancy, but intelligent at the same time. ~ Le1f

Did you really say y'all to me? Did i actually make a political statement to which your non sequitur reply was, 'Are y'all vegetarians? ~ Blanche McCrary Boyd

Smith and Carlos aside, I object to using the Olympic awards stand to make a political statement. ~ Brent Musburger

the hackers realizes which one is which. As a political statement, the hacker changes the amount of fluoride flowing into the drinking water. He plans to do this for only a few minutes. Almost immediately, lightning strikes a phone pedestal a mile down the road. The DSL line the hacker is using "goes dark". Panic finds its way across the hacker's face as he realizes he just murdered over a thousand people with fluoride poisoning. ~ Jeremy Martin

If today I have to make a political statement, it is, 'I love beauty.' I think beauty makes people better. ~ Marjane Satrapi

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement. ~ Irvine Welsh

Coming at us like this--in waves, massed and unbreachable--knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment--becomes bad knowledge--so we deny it, riding its crest until it subsides from consciousness... "Ignorance." In this root sense, ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence... If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance... Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. ~ Ruth Ozeki

He could feel all of it so clearly it was as if it were happening right then. But more than that, he felt sorrow. Someone had just tried to do the same thing to his baby girl. Had tried to kill her, not because he hated her, but because she was standing in the path of his political statement. Everyone who died on that shuttle had been a Felcia to someone. And with the click of a button he'd killed them. He ~ James S.A. Corey

I may go back and spice it up with a little bit of the tool stuff and grunting and all that that I know so well. But it feels like I'm rehashing old material. And some of my audiences like that. So I'm there to entertain. I'm not there to make a political statement or anything like that. I'm there to entertain. ~ Tim Allen

Being cast out of society early on made you see civilization for the farce it was, a theater of cruelty you were free to drop out of. Instead of playing along you became a fuckup. It was a political statement and a survival skill. ~ Michelle Tea

The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is ... political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act. ~ Amiri Baraka

My choosing Islam was not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I haven't made a political statement in quite a long time because, frankly, they get repeated, changed. ~ Tom Selleck

Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes. ~ Steve Earle

Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm. ~ Ruth Ozeki

In a materialistic society, being poor but happy is a political statement. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thus, it's important to keep in mind that you should never go vagabonding out of a vague sense of fashion or obligation. Vagabonding is not a social gesture, nor is it a moral high ground. It's not a seamless twelve-step program of travel correctness or a political statement that demands the reinvention of society. Rather, it's a personal act that demands only the realignment of self. If this personal realignment is not something you're willing to confront (or, of course, if world travel isn't your idea of a good time), you have the perfect right to leave vagabonding to those who feel the calling. ~ Rolf Potts

Breastroke is an athletic event, butterfly is a political statement. ~ Paul Tsongas

I hope that just what I sing about and how I relate to my audience is as much of a political statement as I need to make. ~ Dave Matthews

I dance as a political statement, because disabled bodies are inherently political, but I mostly dance for all the same reasons anyone else does: because it heals my spirit and fills me with joy. ~ Stella Young

The Toothbrush mustache is the most powerful configuration of facial hair the world has ever known. It overpowers whoever touches it. By merely doodling a Toothbrush mustache on a poster, you make a political statement. ~ Rich Cohen

Certainly, the murder of civilians for political statement did not just begin on September 11, 2001. ~ Cliff Stearns

I've never thought of the Olympics as a political statement. I really think a boycott ... is in the wrong as far as the athletes are concerned. ~ Johnny Weir

I'm of the opinion that if you step on stage and you're not a straight white male, you're automatically making a political statement whether you know it or not. ~ W. Kamau Bell

At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Since the end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals. ~ Hannah Arendt

Many poets in Iran have learned to speak almost a secret language, where political issues are talked about in allegorical ways. ~ Reza Aslan

Power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money. ~ Hannah Arendt

To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am. ~ Cheech Marin

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide. ~ Elena Kagan

In a revolutionary age talk of equality may well have represented a passion to provide full human dignity to those who had previously been denied it by systems of political and economic domination; but in the present age it softens the spiritual requirements that are an essential ingredient in human dignity. Thus the slogans of equality serve not so much to elevate individuals to the dignity of being human as to free them from the responsibility of rising to this vocation. ~ Merold Westphal

I don't think Fox News or Rush Limbaugh need Clinton it turns out. I think there's a hunger out there for - whether it's on the left or right - a more lively and provocative type of political journalism. I think Salon and Fox on the other side have both benefited from that. ~ David Talbot

MTV and the culture industry never are talking about community relevance, hood organization, they aren't talking about ethical codes, they aren't talking about forms of political organization, they don't speak about codes inside the jails. What they talk about are superficial things. ~ Bocafloja

Only a cheap politician, greedy for political gain, would try to single out one individual for blame. The fault lies not with the individual but with the system, and that system is Richard Nixon. ~ Pat Paulsen

Democracy is a work in progress. So is democracy's undoing. ~ David Frum

A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side. ~ Alan Ryan

I was married to a Fascist and I was married to a Marxist and neither one of them ever took out the garbage. ~ Lee Grant

Whether looked at from outside or inside, bodies dissolve, matter vanishes, spirit remains - once we bother to go into the matter. "Spirit is the living body seen from within, and the body is the outer manifestation of the living spirit." Extend this statement by Carl Jung to all bodies from electrons to galaxies, and you have the ultimate physics ~ Douglas Harding

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. ~ Kenneth Minogue

To write well is to have felt a tingle of joy in your being; to have left a little of your blood on the page' B.J.Kibble, author of DRY RAIN, LEGION, CHASING THE WIND,and CRIES FROM THE GRAVE. ~ B.J. Kibble

There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both. ~ Tina Fey

Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets. ~ Anthony Burgess

The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

I've learned that the best political reporters never make predictions! ~ Jodi Kantor

The uselessness of men above sixty years of age and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, in political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age. ~ William Osler

When anyone studies a little or pays a little attention to the rules of Islamic government, Islamic politics, Islamic society and Islamic economy he will realize that Islam is a very political religion. Anyone who will say that religion is separate from politics is a fool; he does not know Islam or politics. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays. It was my first political trick. ~ Roger Stone

If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals ... We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities. ~ Erich Fromm

Disparities in economic standing drive radical differences in Americans' values, causing a pronounced and antagonistic political ideologically. Americans are progressively viewing members of the domestic opposition party as the greatest threat to their wellbeing. Instead of fearing a war overseas, Americans are increasing distrustful of other Americans. A great American cultural war between the rich and poor is inevitable, unless corporate America and its wealthiest citizens voluntary commence accepting a larger load of taxation and the government implements dramatic steps to shore up the disparity that continues to widen between the people on contrasting economic poles. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules. ~ Barack Obama

Personalization can be very useful in some contexts but very harmful in others. Searching for pizza online, it's probably OK to keep showing the same pizza shop as your No. 1 choice. I don't see any big political consequences out of that. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Britain is no longer one of the world's price setters. It is painful. It is a challenge to us in government to explain all that, and it is a pity that the political class is not preparing the public for it to understand how massive the problem is. ~ Vince Cable

With respect to the first of these obstacles, it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists, that they confine their attention to Wealth, and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue. ~ Nassau William Senior

Oh, Rachel, Rachel," Leah said. "Let me give you a teeny little lesson in political science. Democracy and dictatorship are political systems; they have to do with who participates in the leadership. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems. It has to do with who owns the wealth of the nations, and who gets to eat. Can you grasp that? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The political benefactors are considered 'religious' heroes. They have statues and a place in the temple, and sacrifices are made in their honor. In a very real sense they are the 'saviors' and so are treated as such. ~ Bart D. Ehrman

I think that DDT holds a lot of promise. It hasn't been banned everywhere - obviously it has in the U.S. In fact, about 10 years ago, the WHO came out with a statement promoting it for public health interventions in many countries. It's cheap. It's very, very effective. We've never had an insecticide that has worked so well since. It's also safe. A lot of people don't realize that its toxicity profile for humans is low. ~ Laura Harrington

It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers. ~ Naomi Wolf

Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason. ~ Herbert Marcuse