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The problem in the Syrian opposition is not between Islamists and non-Islamists. It was the lack of any political experience after 50 years of no political experience. The problem was a lack of political organizations that are truly effective and powerful. This is still a challenge now; it is a weakness in the reality of Syrian political life.
Burhan GhaliounFrom 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government.
Noam ChomskyThe attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is โฆ political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Amiri BarakaI'm very political without being political. I don't know how to speak proper political language.
Taki TheodoracopulosI'm not a political person. I usually beware of political persons. I know many, but I'm not one of them. I have no political ambitions.
Elie WieselI've been offered political shows before, and I don't know anything about politics and I feel uncomfortable making political opinions - there's consequences to them. I often think I'm wrong, so I really don't like getting in political or religious discussions because of the giant possibility that I might be wrong.
Norm MacDonaldYou can judge the moral bearing of a political system, a political institution, a political man by the degree of danger they attach to the fact of being observed through the eyes of a satiric poet.
Roque DaltonLiterature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.
Louis MenandStupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. And I think that's the reason my act has become more political. I've become somewhat more of a political comic because the level of stupidity I've watched is staggering.
Lewis BlackThere is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder.
Rudolf HossTyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
Ludwig von MisesI am very much into politics, but what interests me is sacred principles applied to that area. You know, many people are interested in alternative health who are never going to become doctors, or practitioners. That is how I am about politics. I am interested in the intersection of the Spiritual and the political - how spiritual principles apply to the social and political issues of our day. For me, the spiritual realm, is a more powerful place to speak from on those issues.
Marianne WilliamsonArtists have their existential questions as human beings, and they address these questions in their works. But they are also thinking in a broader sense when they participate in a social and political debate through their works. Often the most important voices of artists in the political and the social debate are focused on originality in their works. We can see this in historical pieces, like "Guernica" by Picasso. "Guernica" was an extremely important manifestation and critique against war, but it was important and powerful because it was also an incredibly original and powerful work of art.
Gunnar KvaranAll films are political, whether they mean to be or not. Star Wars is political. As soon as you have conflict, which is the key to most films, you have politics. It's just that some are more artful with the handling of politics than others.
Sydney PollackWhat we need to affirm is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Whenever we marry Jesus to a political party, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are making Jesus into the image of our political party.
Tony CampoloThere are some militarists who say: โWe are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.โ It is vital that these simple-minded militarists be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs. Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other.
Mao ZedongI'm very much a believer that it's action that matters much more so than, you know, the flurry of political promises and statements and slogans that are used during political campaigns.
Christine LagardePolitical parties often take advantage of denial and fear in a moment of change. This is a well understood phenomenon that often leads to scapegoat-ism: blaming outsiders, such as immigrants, or racial and religious minorities. The phenomenon is behind Brexit and the violence in the political cycles in the US and EU.
Graciela ChichilniskyMoney is an instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing powers we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills of mankind to this single error.
E.C. RiegelOne difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.
Bell HooksThere have been two lines of progress in this world-political and religious. In the former the Greeks are everything, the modern political institutions being only the development of the Grecian; in the latter the Hindus are everything.
Swami VivekanandaI don't think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.
John KeeganA politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.
Mary McCarthyNevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralisation of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?
Albert EinsteinA 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.
Bernard BaruchWe have been making constant efforts, all the time, to start dialogue with the SLORC, but you know it takes two. We don't want a monologue. We would like a substantive political dialogue among the SLORC, political leaders including myself, and leaders of ethnic groups-exactly as stipulated in the U.N. General Assembly resolution on Burma.
Aung San Suu KyiThe enormous social change involved in a sexual revolution is basically a matter of altered consciousness, the exposure and elimination of social and psychological realities underlying political and cultural structures. We are speaking, then, of a cultural revolution, which, while it must necessarily involve the political and economic reorganization traditionally implied by the term revolution, must go far beyond this as well.
Kate MillettGovernment 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.
P. J. O'RourkeI believe that everything is political, and as such it should concern all of us. Authors who claim they don't deal with politics in their work are being naive, because even that is a political stance.
Elena PoniatowskaI'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.
Tim SoutphommasaneMany novelists say, "I'm not a political novelist" - myself included. That's a standard, even a default position. Whereas that divide between art and politics simply isn't possible in many countries. In Hungary, you couldn't be a fiction writer and then, when asked about politics, put your hands up in the air and say "But I'm not a political novelist." If you're a Chinese novelist, a novelist in a country where censorship is such an issue, how do you claim that politics has nothing to do with your writing? It's in your writing, it's shaping your words.
Katie KitamuraAs a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for political guidance.
Alexander McCall SmithI 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.
Italo CalvinoLet's be clear on one thing, the corporate media in America is no longer involved in journalism. They're a political special interest no different than any lobbyist or other financial entity with a total political agenda, and the agenda is not for you, it's for themselves.
Donald TrumpI hate The Oscars. The Oscars make me want to throw things at the TV. In the ancient history of The Oscars, people would go on and make political statements and get thrown off the stage, but the last great political statement, I think, was when Michael Moore started raging against Bush a few years back. Everybody booed him, even though I can't imagine Hollywood booing a guy who's bashing Bush. That was the last great spontaneous moment on The Oscars.
Joe Bob BriggsIt's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.
Christopher HitchensThe human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.
PlatoUntil relatively recently, mass political movements were still about basic rights of food, shelter, education and self sufficiency. The reasons fewer people vote these days, or turn up for political meetings, is that for the vast majority of us those rights have been fulfilled. These days it's in the adverts for mobile phones or foreign holidays where phrases like "Join the Revolution!" and "Cry Freedom!" are bandied about for a generation which knows nothing of their provenance. Just as now we have luxury illnesses to replace real ones, so now we have luxury politics.
John DiamondAs a political independent, I would gladly vote for any political party dedicated to limited government and entrepreneurship.
Arthur C. BrooksI think every film is somehow a political film. You show a perspective and a world that has logic, and that logic is inserted into a political environment, and it means something. Yes, why not?
Pablo LarrainBut the consequences of the whole-hearted and uncritical embrace of politics by Christians has been, IN EFFECT, to reduce Christian faith to a political ideology and various Christian denominations and para-church organizations as special interest groups. The political engagement of the various Christian groups is certainly legal, but in ways that are undoubtedly unintended, it has also been counterproductive of the ends to which they aspire.
James Davison HunterMy pick for Best Political Move of the Year, which is the decisive (ph) and this means it is actually the best political movement is Bill Clinton getting on the phone and encouraging Donald Trump to run for the president.
Lawrence O'DonnellEver since I became NATO Secretary General, I have emphasised the need for enhanced political dialogue among the Allies. And I am glad that, over the last few years, we've had more regular, and increasingly constructive, political discussions in NATO on a wider range of issues.
Jaap de Hoop SchefferDespite the fact that the country was electing Republicans, Obama wasn't being stopped, and it's because of the political system. The political system has evolved into a giant bureaucracy, the primary purpose of which is self-preservation, not fixing anything.
Rush LimbaughIn the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.
Jill Stein