People really don’t care if politicians attack each other with untrue stories. They figure if you don’t want to get hurt, you shouldn’t have filed for office. They figure whatever happens to us, our lives will be better than theirs. BILL CLINTON, speech at Campus Progress National Student Conference, July 13, 2005 Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devils Dictionary In politics, its what isnt said that matters. K. J. PARKER, Devices and Desires The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! Thats one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? HENRIK IBSEN, An Enemy of the People You don’t have to wait till your party’s in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world. BILL CLINTON, speech at Campus Progress National Student Conference, July 13, 2005 Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings. JOHN DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel Everybody knows politics is a contact sport. BARACK OBAMA, The New Yorker, May 31, 2004 I never desire to know anything of the detail of political measures, lest even those which I think best should lose anything of their intrinsic value to me, by seeing what low, paltry, personal motives and base machinery and dirty hands have helped to bring them about. FANNY KEMBLE, Further Records, Feb. 14, 1874 If you have sense enough to realize why flies gather around a restaurant, you should be able to appreciate why men run for office. EDGAR WATSON HOWE, Country Town Sayings The one thing our Founding Fathers could not foresee -- they were farmers, professional men, businessmen giving of their time and effort to an idea that became a country -- was a nation governed by professional politicians who had an interest in getting re-elected. They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then eagerly looking forward to getting back to the farm. RONALD REAGAN In the founding era of our country, it was not organized religion but personal faith that brought focus and unified the early leadership--maybe an unspoken faith in God, and certain values that came with that faith. So in that sense, we cannot discount, in my judgment, religious faith in politics. BILLY GRAHAM, Newsweek, Aug. 14, 2006 I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics. BARACK OBAMA, MSNBC interview, Sep. 25, 2006 The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. MARK TWAIN, Mark Twains Notebook For too long weve been told about us and them. Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that they are the problem, not us. But there can be no them in America. Theres only us. BILL CLINTON However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. GEORGE WASHINGTON It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. TOM DELAY, CNN, Jun. 9, 2006 The politician is a biped; but he is probably an aberrant form of hyena. ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims I used to say that politics was the second-oldest profession. I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first. RONALD REAGAN Finality is not the language of politics. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, speech, Feb. 28, 1859 We’ve come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn’t move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there’s no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face. BARACK OBAMA, New York Times, Dec. 11, 2006 Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service. CALVIN COOLIDGE, Have Faith in Massachusetts The only motive that can keep politics pure is the motive of doing good for ones country and its people. HENRY FORD, Party Politics, Ford Ideals When you take a stand out of deep conviction, people know. They may not even agree, but they ask, Do I want someone who is willing to take a hard stand and someone I can trust to do that when the chips are down? They want that. BARBARA BOXER Shrewd and crafty politicians, when they wish to bring about an unpopular measure, must not go straight forward to work, if they do they will certainly fail; and failures to men in power, are like defeats to a general, they shake their popularity. Therefore, since they cannot sail in the teeth of the wind, they must tack, and ultimately gain their object, by appearing at times to be departing from it. CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it. AUSTIN OMALLEY, Keystones of Thought Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. GEORGE ORWELL, Politics and the English Language I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, its like telling the American people or half the American people that dont agree with you theyre all fools. Thats just not true. BILL CLINTON, interview on Larry King Live, June 1, 2005 Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth. PAUL KRUGMAN, The Australian Financial Review, Sep. 6, 2010 Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public. MAXIM GORKY, Untimely Thoughts If you dont want a man unhappy politically, dont give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. RAY BRADBURY, Fahrenheit 451 Once upon a time there was a politician who made an especially conspicuous ass of himself and didnt say the newspapers misquoted him. ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs Politics has been called the “art of the possible,” and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality. THOMAS MANN, speech at the U. S. Library of Congress, May 29, 1945 The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society. PAUL KRUGMAN, Playboy, Mar. 2012 When a man once gets a start holding office, it is nearly always necessary to finally choke him off. EDGAR WATSON HOWE, Country Town Sayings Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. RICHARD ARMOUR, attributed, Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War Political aspirants make too much of the people before election, and, if successful, too much of themselves after it. They use the people when they want to rise, as we treat a spirited horse when we want to mount him;--for a time we pat the animal upon the neck, and speak him softly; but once in the saddle, then come the whip and spur. CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:12:20 +0000
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