Quotes About Politics

Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.

Here we are the way politics ought to be in America; the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.

I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.

The issue of the American justice system is so much broader than any one party, or any area of the country, or any one policy, because the totality of it is that it's driven by the underlying politics. The underlying politics are white fear and wrath and punishment. And that's what tends to be consistent. As I say in the book, that's the magnet that's drawing the iron filings into alignment. That's the thing that's powering all of it. The gravitational pole of those politics operate on each of these disparate little actors.

The contradiction [trying to use Russian model to reshape Italy] grew to such an extent that I felt totally cut off from the communist world and, in the end, from politics. That was fortunate. The idea of putting literature in second place, after politics, is an enormous mistake, because politics almost never achieves its ideals.

I mean that I think I find the psychology of people more interesting than politics. I think the psychology of politics is more interesting than straight politics.

The basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves.

I went into the foreign service because I was interested in politics. But, in 1991, when I joined, I didn't see much of an opportunity to be involved in federal politics as a Conservative. We were at the tail end of the Brian Mulroney era. I wanted to do something non-partisan as a way of preparing for a role in our politics later.

Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.

The G20 was established as a forum to discuss, first and foremost, world economic issues. If we load it with... Of course, politics affects economic processes, this is obvious, but if we bring some squabbles, or not squabbles, rather, some matters that are really important but relate purely to world politics, we will overload the G20 agenda and instead of addressing such issues as finance, structural economic reforms, tax evasion and so forth, we will engage in endless debates concerning the Syrian crisis or some other global challenges, of which there are many, or the Middle East problem.

Politics is not what it pretends to be, the expression of a collective will. Politics breathes well only where this will is multiple, hesitant, confused, and obscure even to itself.

I think if you were to talk to women who have run, both successfully and unsuccessfully, nearly all of them would say, "You learn so much." You learn about yourself, what you're capable of doing.... And it doesn't have to all happen when you're young - I mean, one of the most powerful women in American politics is Nancy Pelosi. She had five children. She didn't go into politics until her youngest child was in high school.... That's one of the great things about being a woman in today's world: You have a much longer potential work life than our mothers or our grandmothers did.

Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.

In every work environment, there will be politics. If you really want to rise to the top, you need to figure out what those politics in your workplace are. Then, you hook it in. You decide what conforms and what does not conform to your personal code.

Life didn't just happen to them. They experienced life at a deeper level than I had ever experienced it. I had been a radical, a left-wing politico, and meeting the Indian people made me realize that the politics of the left and the right were so much less important than the politics of the heart and the spirit.

I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.

How much of what people say in politics is for the moment, meant for the moment, meant only to satisfy an emotional demand or requirement of the moment, but it is not really sincere? My view of people in politics is that most of what they say is not sincere during campaigns about other Republicans.

We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.

I know too much about British politics to comment on British politics.

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics.

We associate the North Atlantic with cod. The motto of Newfoundland used to be 'In cod we trust.' It was a joke, but it was essentially true. But there is no cod anymore. And that's extraordinary. It's all because of either greed or politics - Canadian politics.

I don't know anything about politics. I wouldn't put too much into my prediction on politics.

George Clooney's 'Ides of March' could be the most under-appreciated movie of the year. In 20 years they're gonna go back and say, 'Oh, that was American politics in that time period.' I follow politics, I love it, and that movie is so authentic.

I'm not going to talk like I know about politics, because I'm a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren't normally interested in politics.

And if Sarah Palin whose Web site put and today scrubbed bull's-eyes targets on 20 Representatives, including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part - however tangential - in amplifying violence and violent imagery in American politics, she must be dismissed from politics. She must be repudiated by the members of her own party. And if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling. And they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

Politics isn't only about government. Politics is about the people.

It's the spirit of Dominicans coming out and the pride that we have in our music and our baseball players. Dominicans love two things: politics and baseball. When we're not talking politics, we're talking baseball.

Good policy makes good politics and what I've done has been good politics.

It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their 'politics'. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states.

I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.

Forget politics. The real story is the advancements being made in medicine. We're on the verge of conquering cancer and Alzheimer's and numerous other diseases. The DNA revolution has just begun. Scientific advancement usually trumps politics.

Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.

The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics.

Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid.

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur.

When we planned our country's economic development, we had the strategic objective of our Revolution in mind. It was not planned for economic development [to be] solely an end in itself. There are some who have forgotten that the sole basis of our revolutionary struggle was the ideology and politics which we follow.

Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time.

The Syrian people do not recognize themselves in the elite politics of the Muslim Brotherhood or the left, each of which is looking for an external power rather than the people's own self-activity.

Power is a central issue in social and personal transformation. Our sources and uses of power set our boundaries, give form to our relationships, even determine how much we let ourselves liberate and express aspects of the self. More than party registration, more than our purported philosophy or ideology, personal power defines our politics.

Politics can not only be drudgery and Captain Queeg with the balls in his hands.

I'm enjoying turning down all requests for interviews. I don't miss being in politics.

Money was the manure of politics.

Terrorists are not bad; they are limited by circumstances. They are human beings. I am very, very, very sad when they explode themselves and kill 40 to 60 persons. It's terrible. But also, I am sad for them, a young person who lost his whole life. It's terrible. They are limited by religion, by politics, by economical interests.

Through panel moderations and talks around culture, politics and identity I gradually gained opportunities to write in my own voice and not that of the brand. I'm interested in a lot of the languages that drive our culture. I'm interested in user experience as language or how societal malaise takes root. So through essays and short stories I began exploring some of these things.

Nothing is as depressing as absolute logic. Look at the maze of French politics perpetrated by a logical people.