Quotes About Political

The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.

One way we exercise political freedom is to vote for the candidate of our choice. Another way is to use our money to try to persuade other voters to make a similar choice - that is, to contribute to our candidate's campaign. If either of these freedoms is violated, the consequences are very grave not only for the individual voter and contributor, but for the society whose free political processes depend on a wide distribution of political power.

A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.

I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.

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.

I'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.

I think I've yet to do the big heave is because New York editors tend to think D.C. guys like me want to do political stories. And I hate politics for its own sake. Politics are so... I don't know, political. Which is an odd thing for a guy to say, I suppose, who has worked at a political magazine for fourteen years.

Krugman has been a columnist for the Times for a long enough time, covering a sufficient variety of political events, for us to deduce that he is a political nitwit. Other Nobel laureates have been nitwits, for instance, Bertrand Russell. There are a lot of political nitwits in this world. Perhaps the Times could give Krugman a cooking column. He would be its Nobel Prise-winning cooking columnist.

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

The Chinese describe themselves as political refugees. Many base that claim on China's strict population laws, which allow them to have only one child. But if we accept them as bona fide political refugees for that reason, doesn't it follow that people living in countries where abortion is illegal (such as Ireland and Poland) should also receive political asylum? After all, their country's policy is forcing them to give birth to unwanted children.

It may be assumed as an axiom that Providence has never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

We have to stop this violence. We have to make the political nature of the violence clear, that the violence we experience in our own homes is not a personal family matter, it's a public and political problem. It's a way that women are kept in line, kept in our places.

Just me existing, as an openly black transgender woman from a working-class background, thriving, is a political act. My brother always reminds me that if you are black in America and you're alive, you deserve a round of applause. There are so many forces that don't want us to be alive, and so just being openly who I am, and happy and thriving, is a political act.

Art does not organize parties, nor is it the servant or colleague of power. Rather, the work of art becomes a political force simply through the faithful representation of the spirit. It is a political act to create an image of the self or of the collective.

It [9/11] transcended the political and moved into the metaphysical. There was a kind of cosmic, demonic quality of mind at work here, which refused to have any interest in dialogue and political organization and persuasion. This was bloody-minded destruction for no other reason than to do it.

Random political acts produce random political results. Why waste even a rock?

When people used to call me a political writer, it was kind of confusing because I was always much more interested in the social end of things which hinges on the political, but it isn’t really part of it.

It's just as political, what you do in the bedroom is just as political as what you do in public.

It (the Chinese move to embrace capitalism in 1989) is a mirror of the corporatist state first pioneered in Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized political force. The creation of today's market society was not the result of a sequence of spontaneous events but rather of state interference and violence.

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

All 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.

What 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.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.

Monarchies are above political parties. Sometimes political parties do things that are to the disadvantage of the country because they want to beat the other party. In Iran, where we have different religions and ethnic groups, it was a unifying factor.

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing.

I don't feel like I possess a particular political intelligence, and when I read work that does, I feel like somebody else is going to have the right political thing to say. As a citizen, I feel an enormous need to respond, and immediately post-election, I felt like, What is my work worth? Should I quit what I'm doing and go work on the 2018 election now? How is what I'm putting into the world meaningful?

We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity black political unity is possible.

Political power does not rest with those who cast votes; political power rests with those who count votes.

The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory.

The problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington access of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger.

The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

I think all writing is political. All writing shows a preoccupation with something, whatever that thing might be, and by putting pen to paper you are establishing a hierarchy of some sort - this emotion over that emotion, this memory over that memory, this thought over another. And isn't that process of establishing a hierarchy on the page a kind of political act?

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.

The people who started the American government, the founders of the Constitution, didn't like political parties but they were forced to start them. Nobody ever created political parties in England, they evolved. And there do tend to be two general tendencies that focus around how much government you think you need.

I 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.

Photography is the only “language” understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man. Independent of political influence - where people are free - it reflects truthfully life and events, allows us to share in the hopes and despair of others, and illuminates political and social conditions. We become the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind . . .

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, "I'm New Here," doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.

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.

I confess to feeling continued ambivalence about political life, aware of its shortcomings and disappointments, but drawn back to it again and again because of its infinite promise. Justice can triumph, wrongs can be righted, and pain can be alleviated, if the right fix is found. The optimistic illusion that one can change the world is difficult to resist, especially when from time to time that illusion is sustained by even a hint of reality. Change does happen in the political process.

Hunger is a political issue, and there are several things politically that are keeping people hungry - not funding food stamps adequately, not funding school lunches adequately. So there is a political solution to the problem of hunger.

Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point.

However, crisis in world trade is, among other things, the result of using political tools in competition or simply for achieving political objectives with the help of economic restrictions.

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.

Large companies cannot finance political parties as their shareholders and employees have different political views.