Quotes about politics (6617 quotes, page 15)

“On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

People , Thinking , Past

“Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups…So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

People , Motivation , Reality , Universe

“The US is the most wretchedly villainous state of all times. Anyone aware of global issues can easily imagine how vast the hatred for the United States - a corrupted, swollen, paralysing and suffocating political entity - must be across the Third World - and among the thinking minority of the West too.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis. page 159

World , Imagination , Thinking , Time

“We afford automatic respect to superstar business moguls, politicians, and actors and to anyone flying around in a private jet, as if their accomplishments must reflect unique qualities not shared by those forced to eat commercial airline food. And we place too much confidence in the overly precise predictions of people - political pundits, financial experts, business consultants - who claim a track record demonstrating expertise.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 10, The Drunkard's Walk, p. 199-200

People , Food , Confidence , Business

“Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming. Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies. However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious. An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

Naked Emperors : Essays of a Taboo-Stalker (1982)

Hate , Fear , Thinking , Study

“The Shah's vision of the ideal form of government was not so far removed from that of Mossadeq. In that ideal model one man, the king, prime minister or Pishva [Führer] would act as the guardian of the nation's highest interests. The Pishva, because he loves his people, could never do anything that might not be good for the people and the country. He might sacrifice the interests of the few for the benefit of the many. But he would never harm 'the people' or 'the nation' as a whole. Mossadeq's version of the same model envisaged a role for crowds, political groups - though not for political parties - and religious associations whose task was to support the Pishva by fighting his opponents and making him feel loved and cherished. In the Shah's model, the Pishva's decisions were to be carried out exclusively through the bureaucracy with the armed forces always ready to crush any opposition. All that was left for 'the nation' to do was applaud the Pishva and make him feel good. Mossadeq and the Shah advanced exactly the same argument in defence of their respective models: Iran, being constantly prey to the devilish appetite of the rapacious foreign powers, the influence of the ajnabi (foreigners), multiplying the centres of political power would allow the ajnabi to infiltrate the nation's structures. Neither man could invisage a situation in which different sections of the Iranian society might, for reasons of their own, oppose the Leader. They could conceive of no circumstances in which an opposition movement could emerge without foreign backing and intrigue.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love , People , Feeling , Support

“This has been a marathon election as you can tell with a record turnout and I think it has been good for politics and it has been good for London.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

Thinking

“Civilisation had been restored to the Island. But now the political fabric which nurtured it was about to be overthrown. Hitherto strong men armed had kept the house. Now a child, a weakling, a vacillator, a faithless, feckless creature, succeeded to the warrior throne.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On Ethelred the Unready; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men , Strong , Housing

“If you examine the record of the so-called the anti-war movement in this country and imagine what would have happened had its counsel been listened to over the last 15 and more years, you would have a world in which the following would be the case:Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait, he would have succeeded in the annexation, not merely the invasion, but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state that was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations. And with these resources as we now know because he lost that war, he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying arsenal that it was possible for him to lay his hands on. That's one consequence of anti-war politics, that's what would have happened.In the meanwhile, Slobodan Milošević would have made Bosnia part of a greater Serbia, and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and also annexed. The Taliban would be still in power in Afghanistan if the anti-war movement had been listened to, and al-Qaeda would still be their guests. And Saddam Hussein, with his crime family, would still be privately holding ownership over a terrorized people in a state that's been most aptly described as a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave underneath it.Now if I had that record politically, I would be extremely modest, I wouldn't be demanding explanations from those of us who said it's about time that we stop this continual capitulation to dictatorship, to racism, to aggression and to totalitarian ideology. That we will not allow to be appeased in Iraq, the failures in Rwanda, and in Bosnia, and in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. And we take pride in having taken that position, and we take pride in our Iraqi and Kurdish friends who are conducting this struggle, on our behalves I should say.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. George Galloway debate http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2005/09/galloway_vs_hit.html, New York City (2005-09-14): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

Time , Parting , Country , War

“Before Mary Follett, industrial groups had seldom been the subject of study of political or social scientists. It was her special merit to turn from the traditional subjects of study - the state or the community as a whole - progressively to concentrate on the study of industry… Her approach was to analyse the nature of the consent on which any democratic group is based by examining the psychological factors underlying it. This consent, she suggested, is not static but a continuous process, generating new and living group ideas through the interpenetration of individual ideas.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Source: 1950s, The pattern of management, 1956, p. 132-133, as cited in: John Sheldrake (2003), Management Theory, p. 74

Communication , Idea , Nature , Study

“If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Speech to the Commercial Finance Association on October 26, 2006, as reported by the Associated Press ( "Finally, Greenspan can speak his mind" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15428994/ns/business-us_business/t/finally-greenspan-can-speak-his-mind/).
2000s

“One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the 'inner contradictions' of such a system.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 5, A Defence Of Politics Against Technology, p. 94.

Appearance , Time

“Trump is a potential disaster as commander-in-chief—uninformed, volatile, poor judgment. Hard to believe this is the candidate of a major political party.”

Barry McCaffrey (1942) United States Army general

As quoted in "What Does the Military Think of Donald Trump?" https://www.yahoo.com/news/does-military-think-donald-trump-204408128.html (15 June 2016), Time

“I would not have been here if I was not from a political family.”

Rahul Gandhi (1970) Indian politician

Quoted in The Dynasty: Born to Rule by Sunita Aron Sunita Aron (2016) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=mUywDAAAQBAJ

Family

“In fact rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved within the capitalist structure, is an example of how capitalism can, almost without conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses…. So effective has the rock industry been in encouraging the spirit of optimistic youth take-over that rock's truly hard political edge, its constant exploration of the varieties of youthful frustration, has been ignored and softened.”

Michael Lydon (1907–1977) Irish politician

"Rock for Sale"; quoted in The Sociology of Rock, Simon Frith, 1978, ISBN 0094602204

Youth , Effort , Freedom

“As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and aesthetic ideals? It's all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

World , Girl , Fight

“How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? How much longer can we afford to wage senseless, destructive wars? How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problmes, and the conservation of our natural resources.”

Leo Ryan book USA/From Where We Stand

USA/From Where We Stand: Readings in Contemporary American Problems (1970), Introduction, p. 3.

War , People , World , Fashion

“Since he came out of the west to team with David Brinkley back in 1956, Chet Huntley has been our competitor — and what a competitor! — but he also is a colleague and a good friend. Tonight, over on that other network, as we say, he's saying good night to David for the last time on their evening newscast, returning to his native Montana to build a resort, and, I suspect, perhaps to get involved in politics. As he leaves the daily broadcast scene, a giant departs the stage. For journalism and for ourselves, we hate to see him go, but that's the way it is: Friday, July 31, 1970. Goodbye, Chet.
Chet Huntley : Goodbye, and good luck, Walter.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

On Chet Huntley's retirement (1970)

Hate , Way , Time , Night

“There is an honesty in science which demands that the best means be used for the determination of truth. Certainly there are many sorts of truth in the universe, and many aspects of truth must be taken into account if man is to live most effectively in the social organization to which he belongs. But in regard to matter---the stuff of which both non-living materials and living organisms are made---scientists believe that there is no better way of obtaining information than that provided by human sense organs. No theory, no philosophy, no body of theology, no political expediency, no wishful thinking, can provide a satisfactory substitute for the observation of material objects and of the way in which they behave.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 9
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Truth , Way , Thinking , Sense

“This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs — real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce — are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Liberals’N’Lawsuits http://www.nationalreview.com/article/213590/liberalsnlawsuits-joseph-6 (February 7, 2005)

World , Idea , Country

“Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.

God , Knowledge , Universe , Clothes

“Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—i. e., consistent).”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Evil

“Russian activists and journalists who get enough death threats and take them sufficiently seriously to hire bodyguards are also usually careful about what they ingest. Soon after the chess champion Garry Kasparov quit the sport to go into politics full time, in 2004, he hired a team of eight bodyguards, who not only accompanied him everywhere but also carried drinking water and food for Kasparov to eat at meals shared in public. Three years ago, Kasparov told me that what he liked most about foreign travel was being able to shed his bodyguards for a while. A year after that, threats drove him to leave Russia permanently.”

Masha Gessen (1967) Russian-American journalist and activist

"Putin's Russia: Don't Walk, Don't Eat, and Don't Drink" http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-russia-dont-walk-dont-eat-and-dont-drink?intcid=mod-yml (28 May 2015), The New Yorker.

Death , Food , Travel , Drink

“War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

War , Idea

“The real Italian anomaly is not Silvio Berlusconi but communist prosecutors and communist judges in Milan who have attacked him again and again since he entered politics.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As quoted in "Silvio Berlusconi booed by audience after angry TV rant" in The Telegraph (29 October 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6455488/Silvio-Berlusconi-booed-by-audience-after-angry-TV-rant.html
2009

“I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do. It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Ben Carson has an odd plan for the Dept of Education" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ben-carson-has-odd-plan-the-dept-education, MSNBC (October 22, 2015)

Education

“Whatever the reasons behind dubbing Modi an international pariah and the subject of a diplomatic boycott involving both the US and the European Union member states, one conclusion was inescapable: it was a brazen attempt to pronounce judgment on the internal affairs of a sovereign country. Modi, after all, hadn’t been held guilty [of] "mass murder" by an Indian criminal court. Indeed, there were no charges against him then or subsequently. Yes, the Gujarat leader had been pilloried mercilessly by both his political opponents and the human rights lobby that has formidable international links. A political aversion to Modi was translated into the diplomatic censure of a man who held a [c]onstitutional position. It was a step too far and one that didn't lend itself to an easy U-turn.”

Swapan Dasgupta (1955) Indian politician, journalist and columnist

"A mighty fall from a moral high ground", 2014

Country

“We commemorate a man, a leader, who in the years of creation and achievement towered above his contemporaries in figure and manner, in voice and power, who worked and fought, and who suffered—as they all suffered who dared to preach socialism in an unreceptive and hostile age. He was a man who had vision, and dared all in those years to make that vision a reality; a man who inspired affection in his associates as in his own domestic circle, and who, daring all, created a lasting and durable political instrument which today 60 years after its first political success, provides the Government of this country and in so providing owes more than many are prepared to admit to the young Ramsay MacDonald.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at a luncheon in the House of Commons to commemorate the centenary of Ramsay MacDonald's birth (12 October 1966), quoted in The Times (13 October 1966), p. 12.
Prime Minister

Hostility , Age , Reality , Suffering

“No one likes to see redundancies at home at the same time as he sees a surge of imports from abroad. The temptation to succumb to political pressure, to make a special case or to give respite is often overwhelming. But to do so, except in response to clearly unfair trading practices, is to court disaster. The temporary measure frequently becomes the permanent fixture and the special case, a precedent for more. And by shielding industry from fair competition in the short-term, long term decline is guaranteed.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Speech in London (21 May, 1985).

Home , Time

“FAIRYMOUNT (vb. n.) Polite word for buggery.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“If the cop honestly felt that this was a young black man (as politically incorrect as it sounds, this is the most violent category of people in the USA) aiming a gun at him, the cop can hardly be blamed for shooting first.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Of heroes and thugs: African-American males and white cops http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa14.html#usa1214

People

“The correctness of the so-called materialistic conception of history, which considers the political development as dependent on the economic, cannot be brought more strikingly and convincingly to the mind than by the change which in the course of the Nineteenth century has been wrought in the bourgeoisie. It can be demonstrated with the greatest precision how with the change in the productive relations a change of political view and attitude has taken place in the bourgeoisie. Every step forward in economic development has been a step forward in the development of class antagonisms and a step in the approach of the bourgeoisie towards its old enemies, the landlords and priests, and a step in drawing away from the rising proletariat, which in order to effect its emancipation, must advocate equal rights for all men and the democratic principles formerly supported by the bourgeoisie. The moment the proletariat steps forth as a class separate from the bourgeoisie and having interests opposed to it, from that moment the bourgeoisie ceased to be democratic.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Men , History , Support , Change

“Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928), Campaign speech in New York (22 October 1928)

Confidence , Freedom

“The Placido Domingo of Australian politics.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Self description, based on the assessment that Domingo's performances are "sometimes great, and sometimes not great, but always good." Press Gallery Christmas dinner, 1990.

“To be in politics is to be misjudged. But the moment I flourish the axe, murder the hog, look at the brains of the hog sloshing around in the bucket, I anoint my face with the blood, the offal, and I give out a mighty cry to the Gods upon Olympus.”

Steve Hilton (1969) British political consultant

Said after Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog', as quoted in "Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog'" http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1962285,00.html, The Guardian, October 22, 2011

God , Cry

“Truscott (shouting, knocking Hal to the floor): Under any other political system I'd have you on the floor in tears!
Hal (crying): You've got me on the floor in tears!”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

Tear , Cry

“The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labor (Arbeitertum), to being their historical mission.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Warum sind wir Sozialisten,” Der Angriff editorial, July 16, 1928, reprinted in Der Angriff, Munich 1935, p. 223. David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, W.W. Norton & Company (1997) p. 25
As quoted in "Erkenntnis und Propaganda," Signale der neuen Zeit. 25 ausgewählte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1934), pp. 28-52
The Pharus Hall was a meeting hall the Nazis often used in Berlin.
1920s

History

“As long as the state is a political entity this requirement for internal peace compels it in critical situations to decide also upon the domestic enemy. Every state provides, therefore, some kind of formula for the declaration of an internal enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

Source: The Concept of the Political (1927)

Peace

“The Bill will legitimise the 2000 coup and will weaken the law and order agencies. All the good work of rebuilding Fiji to what it is today will be undone. The freeing of anyone (even if their crimes are politically-motivated) will show to the world that we are a nation that condones law breakers. It also means that we support terrorists as the Police Commissioner has commented.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

2000, Excerpts from an address to Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs, 28 July 2005

World , Law , Motivation , Support

“The 1922 Club gave me a dinner in the House the other night and I think I had a great success…I had just a note or two to keep me right. I said there were some who doubted whether I was a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. I told them I wore Tory colours in my pram in the 1868 election. My father voted Whig then, but our cook was a Tory and she saw to my politics. For 94 years a Tory had represented Bewdley. I told them of my fight at Kidderminster, how I had come back from a visit to the United States a protectionist, how we were stirred by Joseph Chamberlain's tariff campaign, how we blundered badly over the Taff Vale decision. How when the war ended we were in a new world and how class conscious and revolutionary it was; how I felt that our Party was being destroyed and how I determined to do what I could to rescue it. I did not mention L[loyd] G[eorge] or Winston [Churchill]. Then in 1931 we conformed to the King's wish and all my colleagues agreed with me in doing so. I then touched on German rearmament and claimed that we could not have got this country to rearm one moment earlier than we did.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Conversation with Thomas Jones (22 May 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.
1936

War , World , Thinking , Decision

“Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical!”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Summer On The Lakes, in 1843 (1844) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11526.

Life , Sense , Heart

“First-world science is one science among many; by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of research and turns into a (political) pressure group.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg iii (Intro to the Chinese Edition of AM).
Against Method (1975)

World , Science

“Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it. The army of so-called reform, in every stage of its advance, necessarily converts a detachment of its force into opponents. The more rapid the advance the more formidable will the desertion become, till at last a point will be reached where the balance between the forces of conservation and destruction will be redressed, and the political equilibrium be restored.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 127, 1869, pp. 551-552
1860s

Men , Strong , Change , Hurt

“Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however, … many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say "Aha!"”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

to.
Page 180.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

Age

“I like the War. It is only War that gives us a normal existence. What do you do in peace-time? You stay at home; you don't know what to do with your time; you argue with your parents, and your wife - if you have one. Everyone thinks you are an insufferable egotist - and so you are. The War comes; you only go home every five or six months. You are a hero, and, what women appreciate much more, you are a change. You know stories that have never been published. You've seen strange men and terrible things. Your father, instead of telling his friends that you are embittering the end of his life, introduces you to them as an oracle. These old men consult you on foreign politics. I you are married, your wife is prettier than ever; if you are not, all the girls lay siege to you.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Life , Women , Men , War

“People are giving up tremendous careers in order to be subject to you folks and subject to a lot of other folks. But they're giving up a lot. I mean some are giving up tremendous businesses in order to sit for four or maybe eight or whatever the period of time is. But I think we're going to see some tremendous talent, tremendous talent coming in. We have many people for every job. I mean no matter what the job is, we have many incredible people. I think, Reince, you can sort of just confirm that. The quality of the people is very good. … We're trying very hard to get the best people. Not necessarily people that will be the most politically correct people, because that hasn't been working. So we have really experts in the field. Some are known and some are not known, but they're known within their field as being the best. That's very important to me.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

People , Business , Thinking , Time

“This is not a Budget, but a revolution; a social and political revolution of the first magnitude.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Letter to the The Times attacking the "People's Budget" (22 June 1909), p. 8.

“The foundational God-experience of Israel was the Exodus – the experience of God in the liberation of slaves. Israel also experienced God as the one who was active on its behalf in the decisive moments of its history. And the early Christians experienced God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, who was done to death as a political criminal. For us Christians, the human person is the privileged locus of God-experience – we encounter God first of all in Jesus of Nazareth, and then in every man, woman and child.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Life , Death , God , History

“One of the key topics, for me, is a study of the individual in relation to crowds and to power. A film essay on crowd psychology would avoid commentary (it has become the madness of secondary discourse in many documentaries) and rely wholly on sound and image. Ideally, it would try to provide us with new concepts on the nature of society, on violence, and on the political bestiality of our times that is linked to the way the media has become a plague of words and images stripped of substance. It is a plague infecting our lives and, as a consequence, the history of nations with all that is sensational, random, and confused.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On key topics in the documentary genre, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Way , History , Nature , Study

“Two main alternative views of the regulation of industry are widely held. The first is that regulation is instituted primarily for the protection and benefit of the public at large or some large subclass of the public. In this view, the regulations which injure the public -as when the oil import quotas increase the cost of petroleum products to America by $5 billion or more a year- are costs of some social goal (here, national defense) or, occasionally, perversions of the regulatory philosophy. the second view is essentially that the political process defies rational explanation: "politics" is an imponderable, a constantly and unpredictably shifting mixture of forces of the most diverse nature, comprehending acts of great moral virtue (the emancipation of slaves) and of the most vulgar venality”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

the congressman feathering his own nest
Source: "The theory of economic regulation," 1971, p. 3

Nature

“The carnage will eventually come to an end, but the Western powers will carry the historical guilt for not promptly providing the most intensive preventative measures against Germany's incessant attack-politics. Possibilities existed, but no actions were taken.”

Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970) German Justice inspector

May 29, 1940; Vol. 1, p. 73.
Diary (1939 - 1945)

“In a free society, the individual has the educational equipment, as well as the economic and political occasion, to cross the frontier between the activities that take the framework for granted and those that bring it into question. He has been educated in a way that enables the mind as imagination to become ascendant over the mind as machine. He has learned to philosophize by acting, in the sense that he recognizes in every project the seed of some great or small reformation.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 295

Education , Way , Imagination , Question

“What a pleasant lot of fellows they are. What a pity they have so little sense about politics. If they lived North the last one of them would be Republicans.”

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) American politician, 21st President of the United States (in office from 1881 to 1885)

As quoted in Recollections of Thirteen Presidents, John S. Wise (1906).

Sense

“To the generation of young political reporters, Hunter was Mount Rushmore, a living god on earth.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 14, Casualties Of War, p. 244

God

“Political democracy can remain if it confines itself to all but economic matters.”

Stuart Chase (1888–1985) American economist

The Economy of Abundance (1934), p. 313, as quoted in The Road to Serfdom (1944), p. 124.

Democracy

“As the saying goes - the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. Politicians have taken advantage of our indifference by imposing ever more draconian and restrictive laws that increase their power while diminishing ours. Asking questions of our public bodies is the best way to ensure they are working for our interests and not those of politicians. Through FOI we can go behind political rhetoric to see the true state of affairs.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 4.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Law , Way , Question , Freedom

“The contrary, literalist campaign within Christianity is actually quite recent. It developed among more or less extreme Protestants after the Reformation – largely indeed in the last century in the US. It was consciously designed as a competitor with science, providing equal certainty by comparable methods. It is thus a political phenomenon, acting in some ways like a cargo cult. It has enabled relatively poor and powerless people to use their Bibles (which the Protestant Reformers had provided) to shape a rival myth of their own. They see this as an alternative to the materialist glorification of science and technology which they have perceived – with some reason – as the oppressive creed of those in power.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

"The Abuses of Science" (2010) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jun/12/science-darwin-newton-religion-atheism.

People , Way , Science

“Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)
Context: When the country first tried in 1915 to Americanize its foreign-born people, Americanization was thought of quite simply as the task of bringing native and foreign-born Americans together, and it was believed that the rest would take, care of itself. It was thought that if all of us could talk together in a common language unity would be assured, and that if all were citizens under one flag no force could separate them. Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through.

Life , Men , War , Children

“I never encouraged officers to discuss politics at all, and, as a rule, officers of the navy were exempt from political bias, and considered that it was their duty to heartily support the Government in any measures which might be taken to preserve the Union. This was my view of the subject, and I tried to impress it upon others, and succeeded in excluding politics from the mess-table.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 204

Support

“If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the 'establishment'—political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to 'take back America' from them.”

Robert B. Reich (1946) American political economist

Aftershock https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0307594521: The Next Economy and America's Future, Reich, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (2010), p. 145

Hell , Business , Madness

“The problem of postmodernism - how its fundamental characteristics are to be described, whether it even exists in the first place, whether the very concept is of any use, or is, on the contrary, a mystification - this problem is a t one and the same time an aesthetic and political one.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Source: Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Chapter 2: Theories of the Postmodern

Problem , Time

“Recalling all the erroneous things that doctors have been able to say about sex or madness does us a fat lot of good. I think that what is currently politically important is to determine the regime of verediction established at a given moment … on the basis of which you can now recognize, for example, that doctors in the nineteenth century said so many stupid things about sex. … It is not so much the history of the true or the history of the false as the history of verediction which has a political significance.”

Michel Foucault book The Birth of Biopolitics

Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, p. 36
The Birth of Biopolitics (1978)

Stupidity , Sex , History , Thinking

“The outcome of today's case will doubtless be heralded as a triumph of judicial statesmanship. It is not that, unless it is statesmanlike needlessly to prolong this Court's self-awarded sovereignty over a field where it has little proper business, since the answers to most of the cruel questions posed are political, and not juridical -- a sovereignty which therefore quite properly, but to the great damage of the Court, makes it the object of the sort of organized public pressure that political institutions in a democracy ought to receive. […] Ordinarily, speaking no more broadly than is absolutely required avoids throwing settled law into confusion; doing so today preserves a chaos that is evident to anyone who can read and count. Alone sufficient to justify a broad holding is the fact that our retaining control, through Roe, of what I believe to be, and many of our citizens recognize to be, a political issue, continuously distorts the public perception of the role of this Court. We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us -- their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will -- to follow the popular will. Indeed, I expect we can look forward to even more of that than before, given our indecisive decision today. […] It was an arguable question today whether [Section] 188.029 of the Missouri law contravened this Court’s understanding of Roe v. Wade, and I would have examined Roe rather than examining the contravention. […] Of the four courses we might have chosen today -- to reaffirm Roe, to overrule it explicitly, to overrule it sub silentio, or to avoid the question -- the last is the least responsible. On the question of the constitutionality of [Section] 188.029, I concur in the judgment of the Court and strongly dissent from the manner in which it has been reached.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 492 U.S. 490 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/492/490#writing-USSC_CR_0492_0490_ZC1, No. 88-605 ; decided July 3, 1989
1980s

Life , Law , Democracy , Understanding

“Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

Communication , Cheating , Happiness

“Maybe it's because I've never been in politics, but I don't believe that America is run by politicians in Washington. I believe it's run by people like us, in places like this.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

True Values Tour (January 2004)

People

“Auto-destructive art is conceived as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon used by artists. It is an attack on the Capitalist system and the production of war materials. It is committed to nuclear disarmament and people's struggle.”

Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) Artist and political activist

Source: Ark, Nr. 30-37, 1962.

War , People , Art

“Besides the multiculturalist and the assimilationist, there`s a third position that isn`t often invited to the immigration debate: the skeptical realist. On the rare occasions when they are mentioned in polite society, immigration skeptics are dismissed as “extremists.“”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Byron Roth`s The Perils Of Diversity: Apologies To The Grandchildren http://www.vdare.com/articles/byron-roths-the-perils-of-diversity-apologies-to-the-grandchildren, VDARE, February 13, 2011

“Let's get back to what I regard as a fundamental issue here. I know it’s politically unpopular, politically incorrect. I know it goes against all of the populist indignation that’s out there right now. But you can’t really, it seems to me, expect that these Wall Street companies are going to be run well by a bunch of people who don’t make more than $250,000.”

Mark Haines (1946–2011) American journalist and television show presenter

CNBC, 2009-03-19
Explaining why Wall Street executives at companies that are involved in the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 should not be removed or their compensation reduced, in response to the AIG bonus payments controversy.

People

“The movement of radical transparency and accountability is not about putting a new person in charge, it’s about getting rid of the whole idea of hierarchal politics. It’s about decentralizing power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Idea , Personality

“I would rather sacrifice political position tomorrow than do an unworthy act which would subject me to the censure of an honest man”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

“If it's a flash it's been an awfully long flash. I've been around for 20 years in one of the largest media and political markets in the country, so I'd call it more of a slow burn.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

On criticism that he is an unknown, Jan. 26, 2003.[citation needed]

Country

“As a writer you will know that one of the favourite fantasy plots of a writer is, a character's told 'you've got three months to live,' and who would you kill? I call my cancer Rupert, so I can get close to it. Because that man, Murdoch, is the one who, if I had the time (I've got too much writing to do…) I would shoot the bugger if I could. There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press. And the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life, and it's an important part of the cynicism and misperception of our own realities that is destroying so much of our political discourse.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

"The Long Goodbye," The Guardian (6 April 1994); the quote is from Potter's final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)

Life , Reality , Time , Parting

“Much of the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin's idea … can be understood as a series of failed campaigns to contain Darwin; s idea within some acceptably "safe" and merely partial revolution. Cede some or all of modern biology to Darwin, perhaps, but hold the line there! Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! In these campaigns, many battles have been won by the forces of containment: flawed applications of Darwin's idea have been exposed and discredited, beaten back by the champions of the pre-Darwinian tradition. But new waves of Darwinian thinking keep coming.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Religion , Idea , Thinking

“No political challenge can be met by shopping.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

Eco-junk http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/24/eco-junk/ (2007-07-24)

“The most qualified? No. I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

On Sarah Palin as a candidate for US Vice-President, in comments caught on tape http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CrG8w4bb3kg after an interview on MSNBC (3 September 2008)]

Thinking

“In highly charged political matters, one person's ambiguity may be another person's truth.”

Richard Mottram (1946) British civil ervant

February 1985, as a prosecution witness in the case against Clive Ponting Norton-Taylor, Richard. 'Sir Richard Mottram http://politics.guardian.co.uk/byers/story/0,11320,656525,00.html, The Guardian (25 February 2002).

Truth , Personality

“Vegetarianism is not only the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food. It's a necessary prerequisite to reforming it. To quit eating meat is to dismantle the global food apparatus at its foundation. … Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Vegetarianism Is a Major Step for Environmental Change", in The Washington Post (16 November 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502210.html.

Food , Change

“I am half-surprised to find that as I go on I get more and more confirmed in the old advanced Liberal principles, economic, social, & political, with which I entered Parliament 30 years ago.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to John Spencer (19 February 1900), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 326
Leader of the Opposition

“I object very much when my work is said to not be political, because my feelings about the social system are in there somewhere. The idea is to have it all in there together—you can’t pull it out.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

1980
Source: Flash Art, Nr. 132-134, (1987), p. 36: Cited in: " ‘Donald Judd: Stacks’ at Mnuchin Gallery http://galleristny.com/2013/10/donald-judd-stacks-at-mnuchin-gallery/" by Andrew Russeth at galleristny.com, 10/01/13.

Feeling , Idea

“To understand this relationship we may start with what has become an accepted observation: Stalinized Bolshevism and National Socialism constitute the two examples of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Not only were they comparable, but they form a political category of their own, which has become established since Hannah Arendt.”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 180

Understanding

“Marxism was a philosophical or semi-philosophical doctrine and a political ideology which was used by the communist state as the main source of legitimacy and the obligatory faith.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

New Preface, p. v
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

Faith

“Luisa chuckled. "I hear you, sugar. I’m not gonna say you’re wrong. But I have to warn you that this is the word—‘politics'—that nerds use whenever they feel impatient about the human realities of an organization.””

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Day 700"
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Feeling , Reality

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government: upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Attributed to Madison by Frederick Nymeyer in Progressive Calvinism: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association, January 1958, p. 31. The source is given there as the 1958 calendar of Spiritual Motivation. It subsequently appeared in Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 541; Jerry Falwell, Listen America! (1980), p. 51; David Barton, The Myth of Separation Between Church and State (1989); and William J. Federer, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (1994) p. 411. David Barton has since declared it "unconfirmed" after Madison scholars reported that this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison. http://www.members.tripod.com/candst/boston2.htm It appears to be an expansion and corruption of Madison's reference (Federalist Papers XXXIX) to "that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
Misattributed

God , Future

“The imputation of political significance to… statistics, taken either in aggregate or in relation to separate countries, as if they were themselves indices of public gain or public loss, has most injurious reactions upon the intelligent understanding of commerce.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

p, 125
The Morals of Economic Irrationalism (1920)

Intelligence , Understanding , Loss , Country

“… name association was big, as were my presumed interests in vaudeville and politics. In St. Louis the Bow tie was characterized as "very Charlie McCarthy", while in Chicago a young man defined it as "the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party."”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

On stereotypes of bowtie wearers, [Sedaris, David, David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Little, Brown and Company, Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?, 2008, 0316143472]
When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008)

“Wilson's analytical theory assumed that the natural and inevitable tendency in any system of government is to have recourse to some sovereign body that will exercise "ultimate supremacy" and have the last say in making collective decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of a government as have a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of authority and use of force in society. Indeed, much of contemporary political science is based on this presumption.”

Vincent Ostrom (1919–2012) American academic, educator and political scientist

Vincent Ostrom (2008), The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, p. 87; Cited in: " Vincent Ostrom on Woodrow Wilson and Political Monism http://discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl/2012/04/vincent-ostrom-on-woodrow-wilson-and.html" at discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl, 2012/04

Exercises , Nature , Decision , Sense

“Precedent has shown that sticking to such a political foundation (1992 Consensus) will allow continued healthy development of cross-strait ties. Damaging the foundation will damage the fruit of peaceful development in cross-strait ties, leading to endless problems across the strait.”

Zhang Zhijun (1953) Chinese politician

Zhang Zhijun (2016) cited in " Chinese official reiterates '1992 consensus' mantra http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201612230006.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 23 December 2016.

Peace , Problem

“In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Men , Hostility , Sea

“Socialism for me was never about nationalization or the power of the state, not just about economics or even politics. It is a moral purpose to life, a set of values, a belief in society, in co-operation, in achieving together what we cannot achieve alone. It is how I try to live my life, how you try to live yours—the simple truths—I am worth no more than anyone else, I am my brother’s keeper, I will not walk by on the other side. We are not simply people set in isolation from one another, face to face with eternity, but members of the same family, same community, same human race. This is my socialism and the irony of all our long years in opposition is that those values are shared by the vast majority of the British people.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/socialism-hot-right-now/ (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary
1990s

Life , People , Truth , Family

“If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come. As a matter of selfish policy, leaving right and humanity out of the question, we cannot wisely pursue any other course. Other governments mainly depend for security upon the sword; ours depends mainly upon the friendship of the people. In all matters, in time of peace, in time of war, and at all times, it makes its appeal to the people, and to all classes of the people. Its strength lies in their friendship and cheerful support in every time of need, and that policy is a mad one which would reduce the number of its friends by excluding those who would come, or by alienating those who are already here.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Friendship , War , People , Peace

“In the same directive he raised the question – this was in the middle of 1934 – that now that Hitler had come to power it was quite clear that his, Trotsky’s line on the impossibility of building up socialism in one country alone had been completely justified, that war was inevitable, and that if we Trotskyites wished to preserve ourselves as a political force of some sort, we must in advance, having adopted a defeatist position, not merely passively observe and contemplate, but actively prepare the way for this defeat. But in order to do so, cadres must be formed, and cadres could not be formed by talk alone. Therefore the necessary wrecking activities must be carried on now. I recall that Trotsky said in this directive that without the necessary support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could neither come to power nor hold power. It was therefore a question of arriving at the necessary preliminary agreement with the most aggressive foreign states, like Germany and Japan, and the he, Trotsky, on his part had already taken the necessary steps in establishing contacts both with the Japanese and the German governments.”

Georgy Pyatakov (1890–1937) Bolshevik revolutionary leader

Georgy Pyatakov at the Moscow trial. As quoted in Mario Sousas Klasskampen under 1930-talet i Sovjetunionen, pg 28.

War , Way , Question , Support

“But history shows repeatedly the madness of crowds and the irrationality of majorities. The only conceivable merit relating to majority rule lies in the fact that if we obtain monopoly decisions by this process, we will coerce fewer persons than if we permit the minority to coerce the majority. But implicit in all political voting is the necessity to coerce some so that all are controlled.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

As quoted in Bagatorials: A Book Full of Bags by John Roscoe and Ned Roscoe, Simon & Schuster, "Abstain from Beans" (1996) p. 17.

History , Decision , Personality , Madness

“Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy—a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , Democracy , Game

“Whilst the distinction of ‘society’ and ‘individual’ has colloquial (and political) meaning, those inclined to the analysis of complex systems are more likely to ask which groups or societies are real individuals, exhibiting functional or behavioral integrity, as self-reproducing wholes. In pursuing this line of investigation, it is far more relevant to discriminate between types of groups than between groups and individuals, or even wholes and parts. It is especially helpful to distinguish feature groups from unit groups.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Kinds of Killing" https://web.archive.org/web/20121111032625/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1008/kinds-of-killing (2011) (original emphasis)

Behavior , Help , Parting