Quotes about Politics

Political systems derive their power not from guns and prisons, but from the willingness of those who are to be ruled to expend their energies on their behalf. For state power to exist, a significant number of men and women must sanction the idea of being ruled by others, a sanction that depends, ultimately, upon the credibility of those who exercise such power. When we vote in an election, we are declaring, by our actions, our support for the process of some people ruling others by coercive means. Our motivations for such participation – even if they be openly expressed as a desire to bring state power to an end – do not mitigate the fact that our energies are being employed on behalf of the destructive principle that liberty and social order can best be fostered through the coercive machinery of the state.

When politicians start speaking of "freedom," it means that greater restrictions are about to be imposed on our lives, just as stated intentions of "peace" mean that war is about to be declared. In much the same way, legislation designated as "fair" tells us that someone is going to have their liberties curtailed, or appeals to "justice" will generate a redistribution of violence.

One moment it was there, another moment it is gone. One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone. And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make! How much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred, just for this small moment! Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss: fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics. And then the train comes and you are gone forever.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms.  If a system injures the intelligence it is bad.  If it injures the character it is vicious.  If it injures the conscience it is criminal.

To be green is to reject right and left, and to be green is definitely not blue or red.

 Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote to Error

So I can very well say without hesitation that all those who have political power, even if they use it well have acquired it by demonic mediation and even if they are not conscious of it, they are worshippers of diabolos.

Even when I wield my sword according to the teachings of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu, too many times I cannot save a soul. I kill and kill, and still the villains, like maggots, spring from the corpse of a Japan decomposing. There will be more and more acts like this...and all I can do is bury the victims.

"Boise Cascade," said the other Republican husband.
"Sierra Club," said his Democrat wife.
'Wait, wait," I said. "So one of you fights for trees and the other fights against trees?"
"No, no," he said. "We make the paper she writes on to file lawsuits against the paper we make."

During a recent San Francisco antiwar protest, a young woman carried a sign that read "Vegetarians for Peace."

When are we left-wingers going to learn that we are losing the cultural and political battle with conservatives because we are fractured into narcissistic special-interest groups?  Why should an antiwar protestor be so concerned about her dietary identity?  The political opinions of vegetarians and meat-eaters are, after all, equally important.  And what does it tell us about vegetarians that it would never occur to meat-eaters to carry a sign that reads "Pacifist Pork Chop Lover for Peace" or "Backyard Rib Barbecuer for International Nuclear Disarmament"?

There is
A madman inside of you
Who is always running for office -
Why vote him in,
For he never keeps the accounts straight.
He get all kinds of crooked deals
Happening all over town
That will just give you a big headache
And glue to your kisser
A gigantic
Confused
Frown.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a Zealous one asking what you can do for your country.

Ideology is as intoxicating as alcohol.

Ideology is the elevation of ideas beyond reason.

My political ideal is democracy.  Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday school. These are the things I learned: Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.  Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.  Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.  Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.  And it is true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians money can buy.

Our "neoconservatives" are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.

Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? They come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds.

Among politicians and businessmen, "Pragmatism" is the current term for "To hell with our children."

The one thing worse than a knee-pad Tory is a chickenshit liberal. The type that can not say "shit" even when his mouth is full of it.

Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds.

If you like capitalism, you will positively love depressions, because they are one and the same, like manic-depressives and their cycles, like spouse-abusers and their storms of violence.

Nothing is politically right that is morally wrong.

The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself.

The ultimate goal of radical politics is gradually to displace the limit of social exclusions, empowering the excluded agents (sexual and ethnic minorities) by creating marginal spaces in which they can articulate and question their identity.  Radical politics thus becomes an endless mocking parody and provocation, a gradual process of reidentification in which there are not final victories and ultimate demarcations

Come come my conservative friend, wipe the dew from your spectacles. Can't you see the world is moving?