Queer Politics Quotes

Perhaps the most radical aspect of queer politics was its claim not only to transcend the homo/hetero boundary but to do so in such a way as to challenge the sexual regulation and repression of heterosexual desire, above all female desire. Queer politics, it was claimed, had a lot to teach those accustomed to the narrow confines of 'male' and 'female' heterosexual roles in relationships. The re-working of notions of monogamy and the send-up of marriage through queer weddings, the greater sexual adventurism, the rejection of the concept of gay men and lesbians as 'victims' in favour of assertiveness and redefinition, and the emphasis on the creation of more egalitarian relationships in the domestic, sexual and social spheres, were all cited as examples of how queer could contribute to a new sexual agenda of empowerment. ~ Richard Dunphy

You really believe all that? About how there's only one end in sight for people like you?" Amity said, tipping her chin back toward the sky and pulling her hat partway down her face, so only her nose and mouth were visible. "Horseshit. You only think that because you've never seen different." Esther started to reply, but Amity held up a still-bloody finger. "Don't interrupt me, pup. You know I'm right. You're a woman and you love people who aren't men, is that right?"
Esther hesitated to make sure she wasn't interrupting. "That's right," she said, "but - "
"No but, it's just true," Amity said, proving that her rule about interruptions only ran in one direction. "And you've only ever read stories about people like you, right? You've never met one of your kind before now. Well, except for Beatriz," she added. "Ain't that so?"
"Yeah," Esther answered reluctantly. She sensed a trap coming, but she couldn't figure out how to step around it.
"All those stories you've read," Amity said softly, pulling her hat back off her eyes by a few degrees. "Who gave 'em to you? ~ Sarah Gailey

What war did for him (hasten disillusionment with communism), childbirth did for me. I began to notice what neglected, neurotic waifs the children of Communists were and to question the genuineness of the love of mankind that didn't begin at home. ~ Joy Davidman

The central government was a despotism tempered by military rebellion and assassination and replacement of one scurvy lot of ruling dynasts by another. But the high politics of the city of Rome little affected the lives of the masses or even of the provincial nobility. It was the wonderful army that provided the continuity and peace that this vast population enjoyed. ~ Norman F. Cantor

I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Carlos Fuentes in Mexico - but I knew that many of them had failed, and in any event, I wasn't exactly in their league. ~ Michael Ignatieff

I am committed to the idea of information politics. That is how contemporary politics are played out. ~ Natalie Jeremijenko

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I was lookin' high an' low for them Reds everywhere, I was lookin' in the sink an' underneath the chair. I looked way up my chimney hole, I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl. ~ Bob Dylan

The captain of a ship can run a great ship, but he can't do anything about the tides. ~ Matthew Norman

I like the way hip-hop is now. It's grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it. ~ Nas

I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed, for a variety of - well, for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist. ~ Barney Frank

The campaign website was funded by Armistead, and he personally authored the content. He was determined that the campaign's values and goals would fit on one page. The website developer, who was experienced with political campaigns, was opposed to this. He lobbied for detailed policy statements and explanations, which was the conventional approach. But Armistead disagreed. The website developer thus learned that day that core principles were more important than thousands of words of speculative verbiage. ~ Rodney Page

The student of politics must study the soul. ~ Aristotle.

Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. ~ Ann Richards

I'm not from the arts, I'm a law professor. But I think we need more poetry in politics. ~ Zephyr Teachout

Change threatens, and its possibility creates frightened, angry people. They are found in their purest essence on the extreme right, but in all of us there is some fear of process, of change. ~ Carl R. Rogers

It is complete nihilism to propose laying down arms in a world where atom bombs are around. It is very simple: there is no way of achieving peace other than with weapons. ~ Karl Popper

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them. ~ James A. Michener

Because taxpaying is seen as an emblem of civic worthiness, denying the poor the status of taxpayers has the effect of denying their political standing. Classing a large percentage of the populace as a kind of second-class citizenry is genuinely toxic for democratic norms. ~ Vanessa Williamson

I think the best movies are made not from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it's the color of your skin, or the politics that you've had, or the place that you come from. ~ Harrison Ford

What is politics? Political system is equal to development politics plus political politics. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate effects and to ignore all else. Unless this appears promptly and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny the existence of hazard. Even research men suffer from the handicap of inadequate methods of detecting the beginnings of injury. The lack of sufficiently delicate methods to detect injury before symptoms appear is one of the great unsolved problems in medicine. ~ Rachel Carson

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. ~ George Washington

In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler's successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges.

Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France's failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain's failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact - as we have seen Hitl ~ William L. Shirer

Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was as bad as the one into which she had been born. "An exercise in futility," she murmured. ~ Gary Inbinder

Until one nation ceases its attempts to dominate another, there will never be true freedom. Until one religion relinquishes its quest to prove its god superior to that of another, there shall never be world peace. We will never truly prosper or experience lasting harmony, until we refrain from preaching the gospel of our own moral values and our personal preferences by forcing it upon others. ~ Anthon St. Maarten

Although I was too tactful to ask about politics or religion, I learned that she was socially and economically progressive. She believed in birth control, gun control, and rent control; she believed in the liberation of homosexuals and civil rights for all; she believed in Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thich Nhat Hanh; she believed in nonviolence, world peace, and yoga; she believed in the revolutionary potential of disco and the United Nations of nightclubs; she believed in national self-determination for the Third World as well as liberal democracy and regulated capitalism, which was, she said, to believe that the invisible hand of the market should wear the kid glove of socialism. Her ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell. ~ Donald E. Westlake

I don't talk about my politics. I am registered as an independent. ~ Charlie Rose

If I were to vote, I would intentionally vote for the goofiest candidate. It is my theory that when the people can outwit the leader, the more respected their voices will be. ~ Criss Jami

Is there decency left in American politics? ~ Byron Dorgan