Political Strategies Quotes

The story is complicated and contradictory. Sometimes this proclaimed 'war on drugs' has followed shifts in military threats; at times it is coloured by religious paranoia; often it is rooted in genuine fear of widespread social misery. But mostly, and sometimes quite unintentionally, it is the result of political strategies that have very little to do with its expressed goal of fighting drugs. ~ Magnus Linton

And yet these protests have also shown that saying no is not enough. If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals. ~ Naomi Klein

Our problem is one of spirituality. If a man comes to speak to me about the reforms to be undertaken in the Muslim world, about political strategies and of great geo-strategic plans, my first question to him would be whether he performed the dawn prayer in its time. ~ Sa'eed Ramadan

Memory and motive are the two edges of the blade by which we slice experience out of events and carve out history - personal, political, civilizational - from the trunk of life. Both are highly selective - memory retrospectively so and motive prospectively. ~ Maria Popova

Legislators consistently put the political imperative before the national interest. ~ Doug Bandow

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. ~ John Robert Lewis

A deactivating strategy is any behavior or thought that is used to squelch intimacy. These strategies suppress our attachment system, the biological mechanism in our brains responsible for our desire to seek closeness with a preferred partner. ~ Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller

I'm not involved in politics, and I've never had any political role. I've never been in office. I've never taken any public administrative jobs. ~ Isabel Dos Santos

They could do worse, and they undoubtedly will. ~ Thomas Reed

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book. ~ Elif Safak

It's hard to think that you're a political consultant - not many people are going to get a crack at a thing like this. ~ James Carville

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. ~ August Wilson

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

Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. ~ Noam Chomsky

What my political views or my constitutional views are just doesn't matter. ~ Elena Kagan

In the new century, we should continue to work together to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the vast number of developing countries including China and India and promote the establishment of a just and equitable new international political and economic order. ~ Li Peng

As far as politically how country music goes, it's true that it's regarded from a distance as a genre of music that at different times, the more right elements of the political spectrum have claimed for their own. ~ Mary Chapin Carpenter

The objective of a terrorist is to create political change in the society he targets. ~ Tom Clancy

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality. ~ James Baldwin

It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power. ~ Robert Hughes

The political vision of the religious right is for the most part an individualistic politics of righteousness, not a communal politics of compassion. ~ Marcus J. Borg

Taking an abolitionist stance does not mean refusing to engage in incremental change, nor does it mean abandoning efforts to improve conditions inside prisons. Rather, abolitionists engage in 'abolitionist reforms' or 'non-reformist reforms.' These are reforms that either directly undermine the prison industrial complex or provide support to prisoners through strategies that weaken, rather than strengthen, the prison system itself. For example, rather than lobbying for bigger prison health budgets to care for elderly prisoners, an abolitionist reform strategy would aim to get elderly prisoners out on compassionate release to obtain healthcare in the community. --S. Lamble ~ Eric A. Stanley

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody. ~ James Joll

The Truth about Leo Strauss is the most balanced and insightful book yet written about Strauss's thought, students, and political influence. It dispels myths promulgated by both friends and foes and persuasively traces the conflicting paths that American thinkers indebted to Strauss have taken. ~ William Galston

To debate political objectives, views, and goals is the most American thing conceivable. ~ Lou Reed

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. ~ W. H. Auden

The Capitol looks beautiful and I am honored to be at work tonight. ~ Gabrielle Giffords

Many of today's world leaders have great courage: the courage to do harm. The are ill-advised, too clever, or too skillful. I think bad political systems, by which I mean systems that are not founded on a desire for justice, are mainly due to a type of short-sightedness. When politicians see things only in the short term, they inevitably only see the short-term gains. That is how they develop the type of courage that is necessary to harm others. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The moral panic about supposedly unpatriotic educators was driven by international war hysteria combined with agitation over the growing domestic political strength of teachers unions. In 1917 and 1918, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which sought to ban public speech and actions "disloyal" to the United States military and government, especially among socialists, communists, pacifists, immigrants, and other groups perceived as affiliated with European leftism. More than any other force, the American Legion, a veterans' organization, pushed this ethos of unquestioning patriotism onto the nation's public schools. The Legion was influential: 16 U.S. senators and 130 congressmen identified as members. It promoted the idea that the Communist Party in Moscow actively recruited American teachers in order to enlist them in brainwashing the nation's youth. The Legion saw all left-of-center political activity as unacceptably anti-American. ~ Dana Goldstein

Reagan filled his inner circle with pro-industry scientists who denied the reality of every environmental ill from acid rain to climate change. And seemingly overnight, banning and tightly regulating harmful industrial practices went from being bipartisan political practice to a symptom of command and control environmentalism. ~ Naomi Klein

Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Each functional leader owns their piece of sub-strategies, but they have to work collaboratively to ensure the cohesive strategy management. ~ Pearl Zhu

In political practice, we must be both 'the arrow and the bull's eye', because the old worldview is also still present within us. ~ Alain Badiou

You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country. It is the only way. ~ Emmeline Pankhurst

In France, that let down the barriers more than a hundred years ago, the feeling of antipathy is still strong enough to sustain an anti-Jewish political party. ~ Franz Boas

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades ... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy. ~ Greg Bear

For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols ~ Aldous Huxley

One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party's demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children. The practice inhibited all forms of human contact, so that people no longer wanted to have friends. It also encouraged secretiveness and hypocrisy. To protect himself, a man had to keep his thoughts to himself. When he was compelled to speak, often lying was the only way to protect himself and his family. ~ Nien Cheng

A Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today ~ George Orwell

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week. ~ Lenny Bruce

When the government designates as punishable all play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc., must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom. So not the individual man indeed, but still genius, is to be free. Here the state, or in its name the government, says with perfect right: He who is not for me is against me. ~ Max Stirner

There's comedians who I consider extremely punk rock who I've seen do very political stand up in places where nobody wants to hear that. It's uncomfortable and scary and you realize it's the punkest performance you've ever witnessed. ~ Kathleen Hanna

I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained. ~ Arthur Balfour

Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation's capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Being the reader of a dark fairy tale is much like being the hero of one. Our lives are filled with pain, boredom, and fear. We want to venture into the dark wood, to see the oddities and the beauties it holds, and to test ourselves against them. So we pick up a book of fairy tales. The real ones. THe weird ones. The dark ones. We see oddities and beauties galore. We test our courage and our understanding. Finally, we put the book down and return to our lives. And hopefully, just like the hero of the fairy tale, we return stronger, richer, and wiser. In difficult times - of recession and violence and political bitterness - we long for a dark forest to which we can escape; and from which we can return, better than we were before. ~ Adam Gidwitz

Visitors wanted a perspective on the issues and risks associated with the promise of science. Addressing the public means including their questioning in the museum's presentation strategies. This is achieved on the one hand by associating the ideas and the questioning, and on the other by including social issues in the proposals submitted for debate: in short, the museum must be a true public place that the public seeks. ~ Massimiano Bucchi

Why didn't the Democrats accomplish more right after the 2006 elections that gave them control of Congress? It wasn't just that they didn't have votes to override a presidential veto or block a filibuster. They didn't use their mandate to substantially change how the public--and the media-- thought about issues. They just tried to be rational, to devise programs to fit people's interests and the polls. Because there was little understanding of the brain, there was no campaign to change brains. Indeed, the very idea of "changing brains" sounds a little sinister to progressives-- a kind of Frankenstein image comes to mind. It sounds Machiavellian to liberals, like what the Republicans do. But "changing minds" in any deep way always requires changing brains. Once you understand a bit more about how brains work, you will understand that politics is very much about changing brains-- and that it can be highly moral and not the least bit sinister or underhanded. ~ George Lakoff

political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic ~ Samuel P. Huntington

At a time when the current and two former US presidents have admittedly indulged, as have politicians of all stripes from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and over 50% of the adult US population, the credibility tipping point of the War on Drugs propaganda has long been passed. All that appears to be missing is the political courage to admit failure and move on to more realistic and efficient policies. What will it take for decision makers to display the wisdom and garner the courage to end the disastrous War on Drugs and responsibly take charge of drug production and trade instead of leaving it in the hands of extremely dangerous and powerful international criminal organizations? ~ Jeffrey Dhywood

The new political gospel: public office is private graft. ~ Mark Twain

FAQ regarding my book were not about my use of commas or how the images went berserk, but about the political situation in Bosnia, about guilt and shame, about victims and perpetrators, about reasons, arguments and beliefs that led to the conflict in the first place, etc. All of this needed and still needs answering and ongoing discussions, but I mostly felt overwhelmed and unqualified to articulate anything worth more than personal experiences of the siege, of fear and refuge - all the things which I wrote about anyway. ~ Sasa Stanisic