Quotes about politics
page 49

“I will be running for senator as an independent and I have no plans of joining any political party.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Daily Inquirer http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/696814/ive-never-been-part-of-liberal-party-escudero 2012

“It is one of the great achievements of our rule in India that, even if they do not entirely carry them out, educated Indians do accept British principles of justice and liberty. We are condemned by Indians not by the measures of Indian ethical conceptions but by our own, which we have taught them to accept. It is precisely this acceptance by politically conscious Indians of the principles of democracy and liberty which puts us in the position of being able to appeal to them to take part with us in the common struggle; but the success of this appeal and India's response does put upon us the obligation of seeing that we, as far as we may, make them sharers in the things for which we and they are fighting.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Cabinet (January 1942), quoted in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Pimlico, 1994), pp. 202-203
1940s

Education, Justice, Democracy, Success

“In the past decade the distinction between connotation and denotation has been blurred by politics. The definitions of words should not change with every shift in the winds of public sentiment. Our society has already suffered from four decades of Situational Ethics. Heaven help us in this new era of Situational Definitions. A rocket scientist or military engineer can teach you about Sympathetic Detonations, but it is 21st Century television commentators who have introduced us to the era of Sympathetic Denotations. We now live in an Orwellian world where a semi-auto rifle is arbitrarily called an "assault rifle" if it has black plastic furniture, where a standard capacity magazine is called a "high capacity" magazine, where the confiscation and redistribution of wealth is dubbed "fairness." This also a new age when folks who are given free health care, HD televisions, free cell phones, and enough money to be able to afford air conditioning are deemed to be "living in poverty."”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

The fluidity of our language is evidence that America is sliding into oblivion. Hold fast to the true meaning of words and phrases, or we are doomed. Incendiary Words: Of Detonations and Denotations https://survivalblog.com/incendiary_words_of_detonations_and_denotations/ Survivalblog, 27 May 2013

Money, Health, Age, World

“Those who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,” no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

Life, Stupidity, World, Dreams

“Dissent was not a crime but the opposition must appreciate the good actions of the government. Politicians and politics without principles is poison. Casteism, regional chauvinism, communalism and the custom of dowry were the greatest enemy of welfare and progress of the country.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, p. 167.

Communication, Country

“The separation of religion from politics, and the historical emergence of Judaism and its spin-off, Christianity, however, did not develop until late antiquity; these institutions are a long-range result of the Romans’ use of political and military power to ensure that indigenous peoples’ commitment to their traditional way of life not interfere with their submission to the imperial order.”

Richard A. Horsley (1939) Biblical scholar

Source: Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003), pp. 74-75

Life, People, Religion, Way

“Not at all; not at all… as is obvious now; now they admit that. He was hated by political opponents as he suppressed all opposition political forces, but he wasn't hated by the ordinary Iraqi - no, not at all.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

" Galloway Party Turn on him http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid%3D16574341&method%3Dfull&siteid%3D66633&headline%3Dgalloway-party-turn-on-him--name_page.html", Daily Record, January 12, 2006 Responding to Rula Lenska's question "Was he [Saddam] hated by the ordinary [Iraqi] people?" while in the Celebrity Big Brother 2006 house.

Hate

“Magisterium' and 'oblation' are church terms, they are terms of church organisation. These are administrative things. These are bureaucratic things. How can an attack on those be construed as an attack on God? These are human things which human beings have constructed in order to wield power. That's not a contentious thing to say. That is simply true. These are forms of political organisation and no more than that.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Surefish interview (2002)

God

“From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. […] Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management. And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." […] Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, January 1, 2010, "Obama’s dangerous denial" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer010110.php3#.U35UucJOWUk at jewishworldreview.com. 2010s, 2010

War, Understanding, Nature

“I shall within a few days divest myself of the anxieties and the labors with which I have been oppressed, and retire with inexpressible delight to my family, my friends, my farms, and books. There I may indulge at length in that tranquillity and those pursuits from which I have been divorced by the character of the times in which I have lived, and which have forced me into the line of political life under a sense of duty and against a great and constant aversion to it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to David Baillie Warden (25 February 1809)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Life, Books, Family, Sense

“Let a man get once fairly possessed of any peculiar notion, whether it be on religion, political economy, morals, politics, arts, or anything else, and he sees little beside his beloved principle, which he is at all times ready to advance, defend, demonstrate, or expatiate on. Nothing can be simpler than the two great dogmas of Christianity, which are so plain that all can both comprehend them and feel their truth. They teach us to love God, the surest way to obey him, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Any one can understand this; all can see how just it is, and how much of moral sublimity it contains. It is Godlike, and brings us near the very essence of the Divinity, which is love, mercy, and truth. Yet how few are content to accept the teachings of the Saviour in this respect, without embarrassing them with theories that have so much of their origin in human fancies.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XVI

Love, God, Truth, Religion

“There is an emerging alternative to the big government-big business-big labor kind of "rebuilding" of America. Its basic strategy is to get investment capital out of the hands of the big banks … and into the hands of the communities. Its greatest champions are neither politicians nor oppositional political groups, but – remarkably – bankers; or, more specifically, those few bankers who describe themselves as "community development bankers."”

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

Source: New Options for America (1991), Chapter 8, "Rebuilding America – the Old-Fashioned Way," p. 57.

Communication, Business

“And when I say the world is governed by nothing but demons, who will continue to be demons until they have destroyed the world, I am not using profanities; on the contrary, demon is a scientific term, a formula covering a specific chemical composition without connotations from politics, religion, or moral philosophy.... Here among us on the lowest rung of the world of life, no attention is paid to books unless they are written by chemically analyzed demons, or at least for them. Poets and philosophers are respected in proportion to the contempt and disgust they feel for the creation of life. Give this day our daily war is the prayer of those who govern countries. Kill, kill, said the outlaw Skuggasveinn...”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Dr. Sýngmann
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Life, War, Books, World

“America’s strength comes from its multiculturalism, but that’s only true when all its people, all its races and religions, believe in the same values. Liberals fetishize separation, arguing that immigrants don’t need to learn English, don’t need to stop subjugating women with hijabs and arranged marriages, don’t need to become citizens. They encourage otherness rather than integration. They want immigrants to change the country, rather than the other way around. They say Islam is not the enemy — but that’s only true if Islam is a religion and not a political ideology bent on undermining democracy. Brussels is the result of this thinking. It’s what happens when immigrants are allowed to construct their own state within a state, not pushed to become part of a nation.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Brussels is what happens when liberals don’t push immigrants to integrate" http://nypost.com/2016/03/27/brussels-is-what-happens-when-liberals-dont-push-immigrants-to-integrate/ New York Post (March 27, 2016). New York Post

Women, Marriage, People, Religion

“My greatest regret has been that I could not share the joy of growing up with my children. When they were growing up, I was working from morning to night. When I left, they were asleep, when I came back, they were asleep. In many ways, I envy Jaya who spends more time with them. Of course, these days, thanks to the condition put by the various associations, there is just one shift and I do get back home early. But now the kids are at the boarding. And I miss them. In certain respects, we have probably not been able to give them a very normal upbringing. Specially after I entered politics and the security problem came up. Going to school with six-seven guards holding machine guns is not really the wisest of ideas for a growing child. And I'm sure it must have affected them adversely. Not being able to go to friends' houses without checking out details, without informing the security. Not being able to invite their friends home for various security reasons. Metal detectors, checking out proper-ties and their friends. Even my friends and people who visited me were checked out. They were embarrassed but it couldn't be helped.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Children, People, School, Way

“Ignorance in certain places frightens me. The political situation of the world frightens me. Political anger around the globe frightens me. The lack of love in the world frightens me. Violence frightens me.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

O interview (2003)

Love, World, Anger

“Powell described British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) as "if there be a conflict between the call of country and that of party, the call of country must come first" and went on to say: Curiously, it so happens that the question 'Who governs Britain?' which at the moment is being frivolously posed, might be taken, in real earnest, as the title of what I have to say. This is the first and last election at which the British people will be given the opportunity to decide whether their country is to remain a democratic nation, governed by the will of its own electorate expressed in its own Parliament, or whether it will become one province in a new European superstate under institutions which know nothing of the political rights and liberties that we have so long taken for granted.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to an audience of around 1,500 people on 23 February 1974 about British membership of the EEC. (Collings, Rex, ed. (1991), Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, P. 454).
1970s

People, Communication, Question, Country

“And John took me by the elbow and he led me, kind of politely, away from the group, and he said to me, "Clearly Judas -- clearly -- Jesus is clearly setting out to fulfil the prophecy. Clearly." Now, John was the sort of person who would use the word 'clearly' repeatedly in a sentence as if that relieved him of the responsibility of actually making what it was he was saying clear. You probably know someone like that.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

What Would Judas Do?

Personality

“Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Osez! — ce mot renferme toute la politique de notre révolution. Speech to the National Convention (February 26, 1794) http://books.google.com/books?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22ce%20mot%20renferme%20toute%20la%20politique%20de%22&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wp; though widely published in the above form, this has sometimes been misquoted in some recent publications http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_suspects_incarceres_26_02_94.htm as: Osez! — ce mot renferme toute la politique de votre révolution. [Dare! — this word contains all the politics of your revolution.]

“[L]aws against Holocaust denial have done more harm than good. On a practical political level, I think that they give very intolerant mischief makers a cheap and easy way to pose as something more exalted than what they actually are, as sort of martyrs of free speech.”

Christopher Caldwell (1962) American political writer

Interview with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2007)

Way, Thinking

“The advent of colonialism and western capital to the Arab world has transformed most aspects of daily living; however, it has failed to impose a European heterosexual regime on all Arab men, although its efforts were successful in the upper classes and among the increasingly westernised middle classes. It is among members of these richer segments of society that the Gay International has found native informants. Although members of these classes who engage in same-sex relations have more recently adopted a western identity (as part of the package of the adoption of everything western by the classes to which they belong), they remain a minuscule minority among those men who engage in same-sex relations and who do not identify as “gay” nor express a need for gay politics.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 172-3
Desiring Arabs

Men, World, Sex, Effort

“I have encountered devil worshippers and even interviewed one on my podcast. They are not representative of Satanism. The Satanic Temple, for example, is entirely atheist, Satanists may be hedonists and may not necessarily be scientifically literate scholarly skeptics. So Satanists are not representative of atheists either. But I applaud them because the Satanic Temple has been very proficient in their defence of secular politics, much more so than typical science advocates who aren’t Satanic. Nobody cares what the nerds say. But when the Satanists speak up, then believers listen.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Science

“I would say that, whenever religion has rule over law, that madness will reign, with automatic violations of human rights, but maybe I'm being alarmist. What do they say? How can we know what sort of society they envision?.. We know that they are nearly all republicans, and that that party has been virtually assimilated by them, and we know they will speak more freely when they feel the safety of numbers. So let's look at the Republican Party platform of one of the red states, a very red state… Of course, they want to make pornography illegal (no surprises there), they also want to be able to filibuster the US senate again… Regarding the environment, they strongly support the immediate repeal and abolishment of the Endangered Species Act. Remember that these people don't believe in evolution, so they don't understand the importance of biodiversity and they don't care about the rights of animals either. They want to dominate and subdue the earth, just like their abominable doctrine demands, so they strongly oppose all efforts of environmental groups that stymie business interests, especially those of the oil and gas industry… Texas republicans not only want marriage to be restricted to one man and one woman (despite what the Bible says), but they insist it must be a natural man and a natural woman… So transgender people would be completely ostracized under the law should they get their way. There's no civil union options for gay couples either, because the platform also opposes the creation, recognition or benefits of partnerships outside marriage that are provided by some political subdivisions. As if that weren't enough, they also want to define the word "family" such that it excludes homosexual couples. They say they deplore sensitivity training (think about that for a moment), and they state very clearly that they want homosexuality condemned as unacceptable. They mean that very strongly too, so strongly in fact that they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality as a reaction of religious faith. In fact, they go so far as to urge the immediate repeal of the hate crimes law specifically where that relates to sexual orientation… If you're uncertain whether that includes acts of violence, there at least two members of the current State Board of Education who implied that it should, and we know of a few Tea Partiers who insist that homosexuals should be executed, murdered by the state. I am alarmed at how popular this abominable sentiment is… Under the heading "supporting motherhood", they strongly support women who "choose" to devote their lives to their families and raising their children, but they implicitly object to women choosing other options such as college, careers, or not having children at all. A woman's ambition beyond the confines of the kitchen and obeisance to her husband is decried by conservatives as a deplorable assault on the family which, of course, they blame on liberals. Regarding the right to life, they say that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death. Notice a few subtle caveats here: the qualifier of protecting only innocent life is how Texas republicans justify having executed more prisoners than any other state in the union, nearly five times as many as the next deadliest state in fact. Says something about Christian forgiveness, doesn't it!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Republican Theocracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjNg7nQvB0 (November 4, 2012)

Life, Death, Women, Hate

“Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political, or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure in order to see again what has always been revealed. …the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 3

Wisdom, World, Universe, Personality

“Political correctness is going to kill us. Political correctness led to 9/11, political correctness led to Barack Hussein Obama -- political correctness is a societal HIV. (America has) a full-blown case of AIDS and we're the cure.”

Mark Williams American conservative activist, radio talk show host and author

April 14, 2010, at a Tea Party Express bus stop in Boston, Massachusetts.
Source: http://necn.platformicstaging.com/04/14/10/Mark-Williams-Political-correctness-led-/landing.html?blockID=215988&feedID=4215

“These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream http://books.google.com/books?id=HS9aAAAAYAAJ (1977), by Doris Kearns Goodwin, New York: New American Library, p. 155. Attributed

Way, Problem

“There is not a person on earth who chose his genome, or the country of his birth, or the political and economic conditions that prevailed at moments crucial to his progress. And yet, living in America, one gets the distinct sense that if certain conservatives were asked why they weren't born with club feet or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 61-62

Age, Birth, Sense, Personality

“David Brody: Radical Islam: to Evangelicals, this is a bread and butter issue. You said there's a Muslim problem in this country. What do you mean by that exactly?
Donald Trump: Bill O'Reilly asked me is there a Muslim problem? And I said absolutely, yes. In fact I went a step further. I said I didn't see Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. It was very interesting. I thought that was going to be a controversial statement and somebody, I think it was Dennis Miller introduced me, he was doing like an analysis of me, he said, I love it. The guy said what the truth is. He didn't mince his words. He didn't say, 'Oh, gee, no there's not a Muslim problem, everybody's wonderful.' And by the way, many, many, most Muslims are wonderful people, but is there a Muslim problem? Look what's happening. Look what happened right here in my city with the World Trade Center and lots of other places. So I said it and I thought it was going to be very controversial but actually it was very well received. I think people want the truth. I think they're tired of politicians. They're tired of politically correct stuff. I mean I could have said, 'Oh absolutely not Bill, there's no Muslim problem, everything is wonderful, just forget about the World Trade Center.' But you have to speak the truth. We're so politically correct that this country is falling apart.
Brody: With some evangelicals there are some problems with the teachings of the Koran. Do you have concerns about the Koran?
Trump: Well, I'll tell you what. The Koran is very interesting. A lot of people say it teaches love and there is a very big group of people who really understand the Koran far better than I do. I'm certainly not an expert, to put it mildly. But there's something there that teaches some very negative vibe. I mean things are happening, when you look at people blowing up all over the streets that are in some of the countries over in the Middle East, just blowing up a super market with not even soldiers, just people, when 250 people die in a super market that are shopping, where people die in a store or in a street. There's a lot of hatred there that's some place. Now I don't know if that's from the Koran. I don't know if that's from some place else. But there's tremendous hatred out there that I've never seen anything like it. So, you have two views. You have the view that the Koran is all about love and then you have the view that the Koran is, that there's a lot of hate in the Koran.”

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

On CBN News' "The Brody File" (12 April 2011) ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWzDAvemJG8) ( transcript http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2011/04/12/brody-file-exclusive-donald-trump-says-something-in-koran-teaches.aspx) 2010s, 2011

Love, Hate, People, Truth

“Leaks have happened before. They are not new. But the industrial scale of leaking made possible through the digitisation of information and the ability to communicate instantly across the globe - that is new. If it is to be revolutionary, however, we need a model for a new type of politics.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 226.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

Communication

“Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral] Marshall about it. He'd no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed. When the country went backward — and Republican in the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the DP [Displaced Person] program. The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes. Look at the Congress[ional] attitude on DP — and they all come from DPs.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Personal diary 6:00 P. M. Monday (21 July 1947) https://www.trumanlibrary.org/diary/page21.htm

World, Dogs, Business, Sense

“For the first time in the history of the country, a political party organized on the express doctrine, and with the avowed purpose, of overthrowing the Government, in the event of their being unable to control it through the ballot-box. It is asserted here by gentlemen on the other side—by one portion of them—that if a Republican President shall be elected, they will resist his inauguration forcibly. That is one proposition made on the other side of the House, by the Democratic Party.”

Benjamin Stanton (1809–1872) American politician

Speech (1860)

History, Time, Housing, Country

“The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

"The Coming Disintegration of Financial Markets" (June 1994) http://spanish.larouchepac.com/static/about-larouche.html.

Spring, Autumn, Decision, Summer

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War, World, Thinking, Help

“The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth, 1888, paragraph 155 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-protectionism-the-ism-which-teaches-that-waste-makes-wealth.

History

“Doublespeak embedded in a convenient matrix of anticommunist ideology was essential, as the U. S. establishment was obliged to pretend (or internalize the belief) that the huge global expansion of the U. S. political economy on which they had embarked was “defensive” and responsive to some external threat; that we were “containing” somebody else who was committing “aggression” and threatening our “national security.” The words and phrases “defense,” “containment,” “aggression,” and “national security” are core items of the doublespeak lexicon, essential ingredients of the ink squirted out by imperial cuttlefish.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, p. 20.

“Political and social justice requires, not the disintegration of a country and destruction or humiliation of a class which shows initiative, intelligence and drive, but equality of opportunity for all, genuine freedom for self-fulfilment, in which all men irrespective of caste or creed may share.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Benaras Hindu University Convocation on 1st December 1940.

Men, Justice, Intelligence, Freedom

“More important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush's record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry — notwithstanding the president's political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

"How to Debate George Bush" in The New York Times (29 September 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29gore.html?ex=1254196800&en=b0a4fff00be52eb0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland.

Failure

“In an age of democracy and of peaceful or warlike communion among all parts of humanity, philosophy, like poetry and politics, must be prophetic. The content of its prophecy is a vision of how it is that we may respond, right now and with the instruments at hand, to the experience of being lost in a void that is made up of time, into the beginning and end of which we cannot see, and that is indifferent to our concerns. It is a prophecy of the path of our unchaining and of our ascent in a world of time, in which we remain always bound to death and forever denied insight into the ultimate nature of reality…. No philosopher or philosophical tradition in the last two centuries has had a monopoly on this prophecy. It is everywhere.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 27

Death, Age, World, Peace

“To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 24–25

Life, Fear, Learning, Time

“Some have recently argued that pluralism by its very nature demands civic secularism. There seems to be no logical reason why respect for the beliefs of more than a quarter billion Americans, 90 percent of whom declare themselves to be religious, should require us now to eschew the public expression of religion, even in discussing political affairs that have moral foundations or implications.”

Francis George (1937–2015) Catholic cardinal

God in Action: How Faith in God Can Address the Challenges of the World (2011) Ch. 1 "God in American Public Life," p. 33.

Religion, Nature

“We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Transcript: Thom Hartmann talks to Chris Hedges about how liberals are a useless lot. 07 Dec '09. http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2010/02/transcript-thom-hartmann-talks-chris-hedges-about-how-liberals-are-useless-lot-07-dec-0

People, Question

“Conservatism in America has always been deeply traditionalist, sometimes too much so. But at the core of the modern conservative movement has been the effort to protect, defend and conserve the traditions of a liberal revolution, grounded in the best arguments of the enlightenment (slavery notwithstanding). Bannon's potted blood and soil nationalism and racially tinged populism runs counter to that project and the best and highest ideals of conservatism and America itself. He turned Andrew's Breitbart. com into a "platform" (his word) for the alt-right seeking to inject European swill into the American body politic. Let him stay in Europe and hand out torches for the marchers. His un-American schtick has no place here. I'm sure Andrew would agree.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe (2018)

Effort

“I realise that 2008 will be an important test for Russia, and not an easy one. At the same time, the Constitution of the Russian Federation states that the President, the head of state, is elected for four years through direct secret ballot and cannot stay in office for more than two consecutive terms.
I am not indifferent of course to the question of who will take in their hands the destiny of the country I have devoted my life to serving. But if each successive head of state were to change the Constitution to suit them, we would soon find ourselves without a state at all. I think that Russia's different political forces are sufficiently mature to realise their responsibility to the people of the Russian Federation. In any case, the person who receives the votes of the majority of Russian citizens will become the President of the country.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Answering the question of Dutch TV station "Nederland 1" and Dutch newspaper "NRC Handelsblad", "Can you imagine a situation in which you would decide to remain in office for a third term?", Putin said: http://web.archive.org/web/20061013003243/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/10/31/1955_type82914type82916_96455.shtml 2006- 2010

Life, People, Secret, Question

“Politics is momentum. And we have right now straight line momentum.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016, Interview with CNBC's John Harwood (August 22, 2016)

“Chapter 2 of the Great Migrations…is over. Now comes Chapter 3, the Germanic peoples' fight for their existence against Russo-Gallia. No further conference can smooth this over, for it is not a question of high politics, but one of race…for what is at issue is whether the Germanic race is to be or not to be in Europe.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Marginal note on a report from the London Conference of Ambassadors (December 1912), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 33
1910s

People, Question, Fight

“Words are not deeds. In published poems — we think first of Eliot's "Jew", words edge closer to deeds. In Céline's anti-Semitic textbooks, words get as close to deeds as words can well get. Blood libels scrawled on front doors are deed.
In a correspondence, words are hardly even words. They are soundless cries and whispers, "gouts of bile," as Larkin characterized his political opinions, ways of saying, "Gloomy old sod, aren't I?" Or more simply, "Grrr."
Correspondences are self-dramatizations. Above all, a word in a letter is never your last word on any subject. There was no public side to Larkin's prejudices, and nothing that could be construed as a racist — the word suggest a system of thought, rather than an absence of thought, which would be closer to the reality, closer to the jolts and twitches of self response.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

Way, Thinking, Reality

“And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Piano Man.
Song lyrics, Piano Man (1973)

Drink, Loneliness

“Politics is rather the creation of the best possible polity out of the deep inner needs of its citizenry - who are only some of its members.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 38.

“Capitalism in the twentieth century was dominated by finance, with the exception of that half of the century that was taken up by its world wars, the Great Depression and its Keynesian aftermath. Even before, in the nineteenth century, finance seduced industrial capitalism by offering a vision of capitalist reproduction expanded by the resources generated by financial inflation, ostensibly held in check by controls on the issue of paper money. The extensive and negative reaction of English political economy to Adam Smith’s views on usury was symptomatic of the expansion of financial markets and their growing confidence in their ability to contribute to commerce and industry. From Veblen through Keynes to Minsky, a series of critics of finance argued that economies do not operate in the benign way in which it appears in equilibrium economics. These critics can be divided into those like Veblen, Hawtrey, Kalecki, Steindl and Minsky, who took a general view of finance; those like Smith, Fisher and Breit, who saw the financial system as essentially a banking system; and those like Keynes, Kindleberger and Galbraith, who have identified the pathology of modern capitalism in its capital markets.”

Jan Toporowski (1950)

Theories of Financial Disturbance (2005), Ch. 15. Conclusion: the disturbance of economists by finance

Money, War, World, Way

“If each member of society can be induced or impelled to do his allotted task by associating it with some motive that appears to him adequate, then he need never know how he is contributing to the real end, and need not even be aware of the end at all. It is this problem of organization that we shall call the Economic Problem. It is in fact the real subject matter of political economy.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: The Economic Problem (1925), Chapter I, "The Problem Profounded", p. 3.

Motivation, Problem, Appearance

“…the levels of culture, the aspects of society: military, political, economic, social, emotional, religious, and intellectual. Those are your basic human needs. …they are arranged in evolutionary sequence.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“Politics is as much a regular business as the grocery or the dry-goods or the drug business. You've got to be trained up to it or you're sure to fail. p. 19”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 4, Reformers Only Mornin’ Glories

Business, Training

“I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Humorous letter to Republican US President Warren Harding, facetiously offering to replace the American ambassador to the Court of St. James in England.
The Illiterate Digest (1924)

“I believe that I was lucky to have suffered. Some people don’t realize that in suffering there is great potential, because if you are deprived for any reason… Politically, financially, socially or otherwise… and if you set your mind in the right direction, you will find that the only way to survive is for you to excel, by being better so you can be treated better.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

December 2006, Interview with Jordan Business magazine entitled “The Grass is Greener … On Both Sides”.

People, Way, Suffering

“It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Source: Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932), Ch. 9

Friendship

“The spontaneous individual optimization that drives the theories with which I began is important, but it is not enough by itself. If spontaneous Coase‐style bargains, whether through laissez-faire or political bargaining and government, eliminated socially wasteful predation and obtained the institutions that are needed for a thriving market economy, then there would not be so many grossly inefficient and poverty-stricken societies.”

Mancur Olson (1932–1998) American economist

"Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor"

Optimism

“Now I know, I know that every uh speaker comes before you and says they identify with Columbus but I really mean it. Think about it; the guy was faced with questions at home about whether his global efforts were worth a darn. Some critics want him to cut his voice short… he even faced the threat of mutiny (laughs) and yet Columbus persevered and won. Not a bad analogy in my (laughs) view so I know this isn't political. Now I admit Columbus also had to worry all about at that time about a lack of wind. I… I don't have that problem with Congress.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Address to the Knights of Columbus (5 August 1992) https://www.c-span.org/video/?30685-1/bush-campaign-speech

Guy, Home, Question, Problem

“Flowing along independently of the problems and policy streams is the political stream, composed of such things as public mood, pressure group campaigns, election results, partisan or ideological distributions in Congress, and changes of administration.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 7, The Political Stream, p. 145

Mood, Problem, Change

“Capitalist development requires, as a precondition, that the state foster a general sociopolitical and legal framework conducive to market relationships. An environment of security of property and predictability is basic to encourage investment; in turn, this requires political stability and a minimum degree of social harmony.”

Richard Sandbrook (1946–2005) environmentalist

Source: The State and Economic Stagnation in Tropical Africa, p. 320

“The Panama Papers opened yet another window on the global system of financial corruption, showing how political leaders and businesses use shell companies in secrecy havens like the British Virgin Islands and many US states to evade taxes and hide corruption and other crimes. Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity. Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

"The age of impunity," The Boston Globe, May 13, 2016 http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/12/the-age-impunity/LHBxamqFENCs3W6lvWnCIJ/story.html

Business, Dependency

“With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)

Truth, World, Family, Religion

“A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 337

Death, Books, Business, Problem

“Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Source: Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/26/world/asia/29leekuanyew-quotes.html

Love, People, Making love, Sense

“Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

Truth, Universe

““Tell me, scientist to scientist, do you honestly think it will work?”
“We won’t know until we try,” Naqi said. Any other answer would have been politically hazardous: too much optimism and the politicians would have started asking just why the expensive project was needed in the first place. Too much pessimism and they would ask exactly the same question.”

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 2 (pp. 240-241)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

Optimism, Question, Thinking

“Cease all interference in the religion, society, politics, and governance of the Muslims world. And leave us alone to establish the Islamic shura state, which will unite the Muslims of Earth in truth and justice.”

Adam Yahiye Gadahn (1978–2015) Al-Qaida member

American Al-Qaeda Operative Adam Gadahn in a Message to President Bush: Your People Will Experience Things That Will Make You Forget the Horrors of September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Virginia Tech http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1464.htm May 2007

Truth, World, Religion, Justice

“Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age, — at each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Pierre l'Ermite, Calvin et Robespierre, chacun à trois cents ans de distance, ces trois Picards ont été, politiquement parlant, des leviers d'Archimède.C'était à chaque époque une pensée qui recontrait un point d'appel dans les intérêts et chez les hommes.
Source: About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part I: The Calvinist Martyr, Ch. XIII: Calvin.

Age

“The cyberpunk circuitry of self-organizing planetary commoditronics escaped nominal bourgeois control in the late nineteenth century, provoking technocratic-corporatist (i. e. fascist / 'social democratic') political cultures in allergic reaction.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Meltdown" http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm (1994)

“Schumpeter’s work, his dynamic view of the entrepreneur and creative destruction has had a great impact on me. He indeed wrote a book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which intended to give a complex analysis of the two systems. But these two books, and a few others (e. g., some of Mises’s and Hayek’s works) are rather exceptional. A typical American textbook on economic systems is not written with the same ambition about capitalism with which I wrote about socialism. It doesn’t give you a general model of capitalism, including the characterization of the political, ideological, and social spheres.”

János Kornai (1928) Hungarian economist

János Kornai, in "An Interview with János Kornai : Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard", Macroeconomic Dynamics, 1999

Books, Democracy

“Our generation has the huge responsibility. Of course, such responsibility is accompanied by great honour. We have been chosen, we have a mission. Such mission cannot bring any to us as persons, to our generation, since the time in which our generation acts is the time of asceticism and sacrifices. Only those who are ready do sacrifice their own wellbeing, may say that we belong to the generation which saved Serbia: we are the people who are bringing about the new politics.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

From Zoran Djindjic's speech held at Democratic Party's Assembly, 02.02.1995.

People, Time, Personality

“Democracy in the sense of political equality and majority rule is by no means the most desirable, that is, optimal solution for all kinds of associations.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 1 : Three Criteria for Authority

Democracy, Optimism, Sense

“The last war simplified the balance of political forces in the world by reducing them to two. For the first time, it made the power of the Communist sector of mankind (embodied in the Soviet Union) roughly equal to the power of the free sector of mankind (embodied in the United States). It made the collision of these powers all but inevitable. For the world wars did not end the crisis. They raised its tensions to a new pitch. They raised the crisis to a new stage. All the politics of our time, including the politics of war, will be the politics of this crisis.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 7

War, World, Time

“Morality, like politics, is the alternative to chaos and war.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

War

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Men, People, World, Way

“People may choose to ignore their animal heritage by interpreting their behavior as divinely inspired, socially purposeful, or even self-serving, all of which they attribute to being human, but they masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps and apes do, so they should have little cause to get upset if they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too.”

Arnold M. Ludwig

King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership (2002)

People, Behavior, Learning, Animals

“Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.”

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

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 1, The Nature Of Political Rule, p. 15.

Life, Dependency

“At the Twelfth Party Congress in Moscow in 1923, Nikolia Bukharin stressed that the Nazi Party had ‘inherited Bolshevik political culture exactly as Italian Fascism had done.’ On June 20, 1923, Karl Radek gave a speech before the Comintern Executive Committee proposing a common front with the Nazis in Germany. That summer several Nazis addressed Communist meetings and vice versa, as the German Communist Party took a strong stand for ‘national liberation’ against the Treaty of Versailles and inveighed against ‘Jewish capitalists.’ It is said that a few of the more radical Nazis even told German Communists that if the latter go rid of their Jewish leaders, the Nazi would support them.”

Stanley G. Payne (1934) American historian

Source: Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), A History of Fascism, 1914—1945 (1995), p. 126

Support, Strong, Summer

“The inability of business and political leadership to rise to new heights [required by the] unprecedented situation, [familiar to us now as the Great Depression.. urged for] bold policies…bold anything is needed at this time.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

As cited by Drew Gilpin Faust, " Harvard Business School Centennial http://www.harvard.edu/president/speech/2008/harvard-business-school-centennial," at harvard.edu, October 14, 2008. "The Failure of Business Leadership and the Responsibility of the Universities", 1933

Business, Time

“Dinosaurs have a bad public image as symbols of obsolescence and hulking in inefficiency; in political cartoons they are know-nothing conservatives that plod through miasmic swamps to inevitable extinction.”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American 232, no. 4 (April 1975), 58—78
Dinosaur Renaissance (1975)

“Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Twelve, "Culture Jamming"

School, Religion, Nature, Rage

“As a philosophical problem, it comes down to a better way to engage with the passage of time; and I think we're getting close to one, because the imaginative loss of the future is becoming acute.
The most effective political actors on the planet now are people who want to blow themselves up.
These are people who really don't want to get out of the bed in the morning and face another unpredictable day.”

Bruce Sterling (1954) American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor

in the Long Now talk "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" (2004).

People, Way, Imagination, Problem

“It was amazing that in this country where people allowed emotion to guide their politics they approached love with the precision of accountants.”

Naguib Mahfouz book Sugar Street

Mahfouz (1957) Sugar Street

Love, People, Country

“Of all the institutions in their lives, only the Catholic Church has seemed aware of the fact that my mother and father are thinkers—persons aware of the experience of their lives. Other institutions—the nation’s political parties, the industries of mass entertainment and communications, the companies that employed them—have all treated my parents with condescension.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Communication, Parent, Personality

“Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)
Daily telegrams

Money

“Often the other side of the coin of intolerance is insecurity. Insecure people tend to be intolerant, and their intolerance unleashes forces that threaten the security of others. And where there is no security there can be no lasting peace. In its "Human Development Report" for last year the UNDP noted that human security "is not a concern with weapons -- it is a concern with human life and dignity." The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations. The people of my country want the two freedoms that spell security: freedom from want and freedom from fear. It is want that has driven so many of our young girls across our borders to a life of sexual slavery where they are subject to constant humiliation and ill-treatment. It is fear of persecution for their political beliefs that has made so many of our people feel that even in their own homes they cannot live in dignity and security.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life, People, Fear, Peace

“The left in Hollywood are quick to flaunt their political allegiances; this provides them the ability to both grow in number and maintain their level of influence. Meanwhile, the right in Hollywood, for the most part, hide in the shadows and cower. When they do make their views known, conservatives are minimized and their careers are attacked as irrelevant, or as “not A-list enough.””

Robert Davi (1953) American actor and jazz singer

Davi: To Influence Hollywood, Conservatives Need to Grow a Pair http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/03/13/davi-influence-hollywood-conservatives-need-grow-pair/ (March 13, 2017)

Parting

“Ultimately, we're heading to having the smallest political tent in history, the way events have been unfolding. If the Republican Party fully intends to become a majority party in the future, it must move from the far right back toward the middle.”

Olympia Snowe (1947) United States Senator from Maine

Statement of April 2009, as quoted in "US Sen. Olympia Snowe in her own words" by The Associated Press (28 February 2012).

Way, History, Future

“It’s easy to mock video gamers as dorky loners in yellowing underpants. Indeed, in previous columns, I’ve done it myself. Occasionally at length. But, the more you learn about the latest scandal in the games industry, the more you start to sympathise with the frustrated male stereotype. Because an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Feminist bullies tearing the video game industry http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/01/Lying-Greedy-Promiscuous-Feminist-Bullies-are-Tearing-the-Video-Game-Industry-, Breitbart (1 Sep 2014) 2014

Way, Game, Communication, Lying