Quotes About Politics

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.

Power is global and politics is local. That must change. We need a new language for understanding new global power formations as well as new international modes of politics to fight them. Social movements must move outside of national boundaries and join with others across the globe to fight the savagery of neoliberal global politics and central to such a task is the work of intellectuals, artists, cultural workers, and others who can fashion new tools and social movements in the fight against the current anti-democratic threats being imposed all over the globe.

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.

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

Elites are inevitable in politics. That is how politics is going to work. The question is, are your elites responsible, public-spirited? Do they think about the interests of others, not just themselves? And the story of Western politics since the beginning of the century is that as elites become more separated, more selfish, as they leave behind their populations and don't think about them, they become discredited. And the people look for alternatives. But the alternative is worse. Those rules of the game protect us all. And they are more precious than almost any political outcome.

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.

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game, but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States.

To those who say "Sufism is apolitical" or "no politics," I respond: "No politics is politics." Look at the very old African Sufi tradition, the Asian Sufi tradition, or the North African Sufi tradition. Then you get it and understand what Sufism is all about wisdom, courage and resistance.

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.

An independent is the guy who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Even though I grew up in an area of England that was more conservative than my personal politics and my family's personal politics, I grew up with a lot of guy friends. There was no real difference between us. When I moved to London, it really became apparent that gender was going to make a mark. I started experiencing sexual intimidation and aggression. People coming up to women on the streets and telling them how hot they are and what they wanted to do to them. For me, that was shocking coming from a village. I thought intersexuality was a great way of exploring that shock.

I don't dabble in politics too much. I'm really ignorant to the world of politics. I'm not that smart, I'm not that cunning, it's just too much smoke and mirrors for me. I just don't want to play that game.

I hate politicians. I hate politics. But if I start to go into politics, I think I believe that I can serve more, I can help more people.

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.

The way to solve all the money in politics is not to pretend we can get money out of politics. That will never happen. We have to channel it in ways where we can see it and hold it accountable. And I think the parties are the best vehicle for that.

There are some militarists who say: ‘We are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.’ 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.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!

I think the fact that we have been focussing on politics quite a lot and the tumult of politics rather than what we should be doing in terms of policy has made, I think, voters quite grumpy.

People always think American politics is very different, but usually it is a predictor of what happens in the politics elsewhere.

Politics creates an almost endless time horizon into the future. ... As governor I had the incredible luxury of being able to dream on a grand scale. And this sense of infinite possibility gives politics its romance.

No. I probably do better not being in politics. They have too much control over you when you are in politics.

Politics, in my judgment, has become not just the means to a policy ends, but it's become the end itself. Politics has become the sport that we all watch, and we all pay attention to.

I have sometimes heard men say politics must have nothing to do with business, and I have often wished that business had nothing to do with politics.

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.

People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts. ... There's a simple way to keep money out of politics: Keep politics out of our money.

One of the biggest stories in all of politics worldwide, in all of politics in this country, for decades is what's happened with the Republican Party.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

On politics I strive as much as possible to let my passions be for God and for the Church and for others (the Jesus Creed). I place no confidence in redemption by way of politics. The political hope ebbs and flows every 8 years now; I don't get all riled up if a Republican or a Democrat wins; I don't think it matters that much to what we are called to do on a daily basis.

Every time someone reads a story about the politics poisoning the global warming stuff it makes it feel like a political story, meaning it's Us and Them, instead of what it is: this profound challenge we face given our energy norms right now, the fuels of convenience toward something new. No matter what the politics are, it's still an enormous transformation that has to take place.

I'm looking forward to the day when America will mature to the point that we are a color-blind society. I'm not so sure that in politics that will ever be reality, because politics has a way of separating us based on skin color.

If you take the conflicts we are used to dealing with, race over the years in America, and you combine that with the desire or aspiration to political power or taking power from other people, which is what politics is all about, you end up with a lot more friction than you would normally see with just straight-ahead politics.

You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.

We must remember that politics is more than a power game. The core of politics in my view is to serve our citizens, to serve our fellow human beings.

You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

One of the things that really has gone wrong in modern politics, one of the things that made Trump possible was that many people have a view of politics as something dramatic and exciting and thrilling and emotional.

I think it's a slightly crazy time actually, it's very difficult to satirise because each of politicians is in their own way enacting a commentary on the world of politics anyway. To then comment on them just feels like adding another layer. I find it very difficult to do jokes about current politics because for me it's all about... I actually genuinely want people to be involved properly, you know? I mean, the number of people who don't vote... Frightening, really.

Politics at all times lead to bloody wars, and not only politics, but also religions as well as social and economic systems of alltimes are spattered with blood. Invariably the big ones devoured the little ones, and the little ones the tiny ones.

The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that, it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.

There are many in public life who deserve only our praise and admiration. But there are too many who are products of a class that knows little other than spin and the machinations of politics. Little wonder that leadership of the transforming sort is so hard to come by. The danger is that this may be permanent. Where our best people shun politics because the profession isn't honoured as it once was, this only serves to make the profession even less honoured.

Politics didn't lead me to working people. Working people led me into politics.

Politics should be about politics, not tribal ties

I've never needed a lobbyist personally to put my case. I'd rather put my case myself. But I don't understand how other people look at things. A lot of people in business haven't been involved in politics. They are frightened of ministers and the whole procedure. It's not something to be frightened of. It's something to go in and realise that people who go into politics, regardless of being Labor, Liberal or Nationals, primarily go in to serve the community.

If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.

In the United States especially, politics and economics don’t mix well. Politicians have all sorts of reasons to pass all sorts of laws that, as well-meaning as they may be, fail to account for the way real people respond to real-world incentives.

To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.

My climb to political success was no elevator ride, and it has not always been pretty, but I persevered as one of a handful of women in the male-dominated world of politics.

I have always believed the thesis that one's politics and the character of one's intellectual work are inseparable.