Source: Utilitarianism (1861), Ch. 1
“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or…" by Jonathan Swift?
Jonathan Swift 141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes
George Raymond Richard Martin
(1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer
On a panel with R. Scott Bakker in Semana Negra, Spain (2008)
“Good government is good politics and politics is good government.”
Richard J. Daley
(1902–1976) American politician
[The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, Paul Michael Green, Melvin G. Holli, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995, 144, ISBN 0809319616]
An ofttimes repeated maxim of Daley's to describe his view on the inseparability of politics and government.
John Quincy Adams
(1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)
Diary record of a comment made by Adams to John Marshall, Charles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams : Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (1875), p. 372
Anthony Kennedy
(1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50 http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html (21 January 2010).
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Politics
Alan Moore
(1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: As to how politics relate to the storytelling process, I’d say that it’s probably in the same way that politics relate to everything. I mean, as the old feminist maxim used to go, “the personal is the political.” We don’t really live in an existence where the different aspects of our society are compartmentalized in the way that they are in bookshops. In a bookshop, you’ll have a section that is about history, that is about politics, that is about the contemporary living, or the environment, or modern thinking, modern attitudes. All of these things are political. All of these things are not compartmentalized; they’re all mixed up together. And I think that inevitably there is going to be a political element in everything that we do or don’t do. In everything we believe, or do not believe.
I mean, in terms of politics I think that it’s important to remember what the word actually means. Politics sometimes sells itself as having an ethical dimension, as if there was good politics and bad politics. As far as I understand it, the word actually has the same root as the word polite. It is the art of conveying information in a politic way, in a way that will be discrete and diplomatic and will offend the least people. And basically we’re talking about spin. Rather than being purely a late 20th, early 21st century term, it’s obvious that politics have always been nothing but spin. But, that said, it is the system which is interwoven with our everyday lives, so every aspect our lives is bound to have a political element, including writing fiction.
