quotations about politics
There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
HELEN DENDY BOSANQUET
The Family
Politics ... regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of a community, as the application of great and unchangeable principles to public affairs, is a noble sphere of thought and action; but politics, in its common sense, or considered as the invention of temporary shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of men above another, is a paltry and debasing concern.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It's time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", April 3, 1964
To serve as prime minister while being too mindful of the approval rating is like serving as a prime minister on a roller coaster. What is important, I believe, is that I really act on promises that I make and leave results.
SHINZO ABE
Talk Asia, April 30, 2007
Madame Politics is like Venus: they whom she decoys into her castle perish.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Story of My Life
For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog.
TONY BLAIR
A Journey: My Political Life
Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make.
BILL GINDLESPERGER
"Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make", Public Opinion, May 6, 2016
I say that politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion. Political institutions are secular by definition and operate in independent spheres. All my predecessors have said the same thing, for many years at least, albeit with different accents. I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I'm here.
POPE FRANCIS
"How the Church will change", La Repubblica, October 1, 2013
Politics is the art of trying to bring about the possible, the doable and achieving the most sensible elements of our mutually shared aspirations. It is in this sense that politics is much more than a necessary evil; it also can be a liberating activity and a necessary good.
THOMAS E. CRONIN
"Giving up on politics is not an option", The Denver Post, April 30, 2016
All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
It is a maxim, founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Henry Laurens, November 14, 1778
The politics of the unpolitical--these are the politics of those who desire to be pure in heart: the politics of men without personal ambition; of those who have not desires wealth or an unequal share of worldly possessions; of those who have always striven, whatever their race or condition, for human values and not for national or sectional interests. For our Western world, Christ is the supreme example of this unselfish devotion to the good of humanity, and the Sermon on the Mount is the source of all the politics of the unpolitical.
HERBERT READ
"The Politics of the Unpolitical", To Hell with Culture
The politician is a biped; but he is probably an aberrant form of hyena.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Politics is at the heart of a representative republic. It is to democracy what the experimental method is to physics, what melody is to music, what the imagination is to poetry.
THOMAS E. CRONIN
"Giving up on politics is not an option", The Denver Post, April 30, 2016
The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.
TONY BLAIR
A Journey: My Political Life
Under every stone lurks a politician.
ARISTOPHANES
Thesmophoriazusae
Guess what -- politics is hard. Even if you're a celebrity with an unparalleled ability to garner media attention, you can't just blow in to a process you've never participated in before, hire a bunch of people who don't have much experience in it either, believe that big rallies are a substitute for careful organizing, and think you're going to walk away with a victory.
PAUL WALDMAN
"Donald Trump is shocked to learn that politics is complicated", The Washington Post, April 13, 2016
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Report to Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 7, 1918