Quotes About Political

The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn't seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn't know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.

Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of political parties, and real ones cannot be evaded by political parties. The real political issues of the day declare themselves, and come out of the depths of that deep which we call public opinion.

Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about identifying with and understanding people who are not necessarily like us. By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political. At the heart of the 'art of the novel' lies the human capacity to see the world through others' eyes. Compassion is the greatest strength of the novelist.

If a Cuban refugee is escaping, we're saying they're a political refugee, but why isn't a Haitian refugee a political refugee? They're escaping the capitalism and degradation of economic imperialism. We don't call them political refugees; we call them unfortunate people.

The American founders, when framing their governments, looked to the Bible for insights into human nature, civic virtue, social order, political authority and other concepts essential to the establishment of a political society. They saw in Scripture political and legal models - such as republicanism, separation of powers, and due process of law - that they believed enjoyed divine favor and were worthy of emulation in their polities.

The Israel stories were really hard for me to write, because I think that my book is very much about politics, but it isn't political. It really was important for me to not have a political agenda at all, because I have a hard time stomaching any political fiction that feels message-y.

I mean, putting women in the center of a movie and not talking about men, that's already political, right? And you know, political doesn't mean that it sends this message or that is has a statement. It's also political in its aesthetic project.

If it comes to a question of law, the charges they brought against me - the Espionage Act - is called the quintessential political crime. A political crime, in legal terms, is defined as any crime against a state, as opposed to against an individual. Assassination, for example, is not a political crime because you've killed a person, an individual, and they've been harmed; their family's been harmed. But the state itself, you can't be extradited for harming it.

Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.

Any time the negro becomes involved in mature political action, then the resistance of the politicians who benefit from the exploited political system as it now stands will be forced to put, exercise more violent action to deprive the negro of his mature political action.

Modern equalitarian societies whether democratic or authoritarian in their political forms, always base themselves on the claim that they are making life happier. Happiness thus becomes the chief political issue -- in a sense, the only political issue -- and for that reason it can never be treated as an issue at all.

I think you have to ask yourself, what is the point of the script? What is the script selling? Because all scripts are political, every story is political. It either challenges or reinforces some schism or stereotype. So what is the project going to say at the end of the day? What does it tell you about the world, or what does it challenge in terms of your world?

Let's face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there - they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American!

What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country ... he knows that ... the Democrat party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. ... This guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder -- but something lesser.

It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.

I think that we're at an alarming moment in American political development and maybe in world political development, because the United States is so influential. If the trends of the last thirty or forty years are not halted and reversed - and those trends include increasingly inequality, a crumbling public life, a disintegrating public infrastructure, an exhausted ecology, and a huge war arsenal, and more and more war making - then I'm rather gloomy about the prospects for the American future and the harm that the United States could do to the world.

The principle of my political life ... is that all amelioration and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.

Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible.

Now, the political class tries to make sense of all of this, but they can't, because never has the political class or the mainstream media that covers them been more out of touch with the American people than they are today.

Part of what you need to understand is that we're forced to look back. You had the importation of third world or developing world conditions into the United States because of a bipartisan elite consensus for neo-liberalism. In other words, you had both political parties, the smarty-pants in both political parties said, hey, let's do these crazy trade deals.

All religions are equal to me. And all castes and creeds are dear to me. But though I appreciate all `isms,' religions and political parties for the many good things they seek to achieve, I do not and cannot belong to any of these `isms,' religions or political parties, for the Absolute Truth, while equally including them, transcends all of them and leaves no room for separative divisions which are all equally false.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they arent still there, hes no longer a political leader.

Whats different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. Its all part of the suffocating spin cycle were in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base.

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.

Government usually doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is political. People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs. The difference between the political process and an honest life is the difference between parading around waving picket signs while hollering catcalls in front of the White House and getting up in the morning to go make a living.

I'm not so sure liberal democracy as we know it has reached its terminus. It's clear though, that many have genuinely lost confidence in the Australian political class. One reason is that we like to place enormous burdens of expectations on modern political leaders. To be sure such expectations aren't always honest. Just as we want better public services but object to paying the higher taxes that would make them possible, we often want leadership but only if there aren't hard choices with real consequences.

I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who is disavowing the political connotations of what they write.

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice.

Washington's answer to a self-inflicted financial crisis reminded Americans why they so deeply distrust the political class. The 'fiscal cliff' process was secretive and sloppy, and the nation's so-called leadership lacked the political courage to address our root problems: joblessness and debt.

There are a number of Americans who've been taught that, that the Constitution has nothing to do with immigration. The Declaration of Independence has nothing to do with it. It's the Statue of Liberty. And there is complete and total ignorance about it. And I maintain it's because they have not been taught the truth. And even if they have been taught the truth, they have rejected it in favor of what their political biases happen to be as their political biases relate to their narrative and the agenda.

I do not have any political commitments anymore. I'm politically a total agnostic; I'm one of the few writers in Italy who refuses to be identified with a specific political party.

The Conquest is not a film about Nicolas Sarkozy - it's a film about political conquest. It's a Shakespearean expression, where we have all the elements of a drama, both political and personal at the same time. The decors and the costumes are all based on real photos - I wanted to be as close to reality as possible. Nicola Piovani's theatrical music gives a distance that's almost Chaplinesque, there's something quite funny. There's no imitation, no caricature, no parodie - it's realism with a distance where the dialogues are often quite funny.

He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either.

Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies

Political correctness gets in the way of all too many things in this country of ours, I am not a subscriber of political correctness by any means, shape or form.

The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.

Political power intoxicates the best hearts. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with much political power.

I see a lot of individual action when it comes to environmental questions really as a form of politics as a way of communicating with political leaders, much in the same way that acts of civil disobedience during the civil rights' movement were really acts of political communication, trying to get laws changed rather than based on the thought that the individual action would really change the practices of segregation.

As a political independent, I would gladly vote for any political party dedicated to limited government and entrepreneurship.

The word conservative means discriminatory practically. It's a form of political discrimination. What do the Republicans run on? Against gay marriage and for a war that makes no sense. A war that was based on faulty intelligence. That's all they ever talk about. That and immigration. Another discriminatory argument for political gain.

All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war.

William R. Polk discusses the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon [ Bonaparte] and other cases where the conflict turns into a political war, and the invader, who usually has overwhelming power, loses because they can't fight the political war.

We've got communism. We have Bushism. We have Clintonism. But there isn't a Trumpism. Bullet-point for me what the Trump political philosophy is and you can't do it, because he's not a political guy.

I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.

It is now up to us to see that we embark on the next stage leading to political unity, which I think is the consequence of economic unity, so that Europe can in the future also play a political role on the international stage, leading even as far as a common defence policy.

When you're in political times, you want to reflect those political times, and sometimes going back to our past is the best way to look at our present.