“To a political mind, everything is politics.”
Charles Sheffield book Proteus In The Underworld
Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 3 (p. 23)
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
“To a political mind, everything is politics.”
Charles Sheffield book Proteus In The Underworld
Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 3 (p. 23)
“Everything is art. Everything is politics.”
Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist
Coonan, Clifford. “ An Artist’s Struggle for Justice in China http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/an-artists-struggle-for-justice-in-china1912352.html.” Independent, February 27, 2010. <br class="br">2010-, 2010
Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist
Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 7, In Praise Of Politics, p. 151.
“Everything has become too political and it is ludicrous.”
Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe
Terry Gilliam's flying circus (2006)
Context: I went to university on a scholarship that was funded by a church. I was on the way to becoming a Presbyterian missionary. In the end I left school. The reason was that I used to tell jokes about God and the people around me did not like the jokes. I asked them, What kind of God is this who can't cope with my lousy jokes? What kind of God feels threatened by these jokes? So I left. And the truth is that this is exactly what I have to say about the present situation. Everything has become too political and it is ludicrous. I understand why they are upset, but it has reached an absurd pass and the Muslims are only hurting themselves.
Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist
Introduction
2010s, 2013, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics (2013)
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.
Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
“Politics is absolutely hopeless. That’s why everything has gone wrong.”
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist
From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: This is not a visible revolution and it is not political. You’re dealing with the invisible world of technology.
Politics is absolutely hopeless. That’s why everything has gone wrong. You have ninety-nine percent of the people thinking “politics,” and hollering and yelling. And that won’t get you anywhere. Hollering and yelling won’t get you across the English Channel. It won’t reach from continent to continent; you need electronics for that, and you have to know what you’re doing. Evolution has been at work doing all these things so it is now possible. Nobody has consciously been doing it. The universe is a lot bigger than you and me. We didn’t invent it. If you take all the machinery in the world and dump it in the ocean, within months more than half of all humanity will die and within another six months they’d almost all be gone; if you took all the politicians in the world, put them in a rocket, and sent them to the moon, everyone would get along fine.
Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.
Source: On challenging stereotypes in “Researcher Nadia Barhoum interviews Rabih Alameddine” https://belonging.berkeley.edu/alameddine (Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley)
“In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist