Politics Observation Quotes

“السياسة فن السفالة الأنيقة”
― أنيس منصور, كتاب عن كتب

“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.”
― Otto von Bismarck

“Every election is determined by the people who show up.”
― Larry J. Sabato , Pendulum Swing

“When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.”
― Thomas L. Friedman

“The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.”
― George Orwell

“A Man Without Honor
is Worse than Dead.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“All empires become arrogant. It is their nature.”
― Edward Rutherfurd, New York

“We are in a prison of our own minds holding our own chains around us. We create our oligarchs and fight for their right to oppress us.”
― Heather Marsh, Binding Chaos

“One of the hallmarks of our politics now is that we tend to elect those who can campaign over those who can lead;”
― Ethan Canin, America America

“Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.”
― Bergen Evans

“Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by . . . politicians.”
― P. J. O'Rourke

“Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong… This [is] mostly BS.”
― Jeffrey A. Miller

“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.”
― Cornelius Tacitus

“The women of the world will dominate politics, some day, and you mustn't be too old-fashioned in your notions to join the procession of progress.”
― L. Frank Baum, Phoebe Daring: A Story for Young Folk

“You don't get to be the president of anything if you have bad manners.”
― Daven Anderson, Vampire Syndrome

“The difference between a sucker and a seeker is the degree to which each internalises a sense of certainty and to what ends they will go in extrapolating it into utter absurdity.”
― Ryan Fletcher

“Writers are extremely important people in a country, whether or not the country knows it. The multiple truths about a people are revealed by that people's artists--that is what the artists are for.”
― James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings

“The similarities between both of these groups were striking and should be clear to anyone who reads this book. Both groups were and are defined primarily by an unshakable belief in the inhumanity of their enemies on the other side; the Christians seldom distinguished between Islamic terrorism and, say, Al Gore–style environmentalism, while the Truthers easily believed that reporters for the Washington Post, the president, and the front-line operators of NORAD were equally capable of murdering masses of ordinary New York financial-sector employees. Abandoned by the political center, both groups ascribed unblinkingly to a militant, us-against-them worldview, where only their own could be trusted. What made them distinctly American was that, while actually the victims of an obvious, unhidden conspiracy of corrupt political power, they chose to battle bugbears that were completely idiotic, fanciful, and imaginary”
― Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

“No voter wants to believe he doesn’t really matter, so he buys into the idea that there are two substantively different parties frantically competing for his attention, the ideological fate of the country hanging on his decision every few years. It flatters the average citizen to think that way. The reality is that the dominant characteristic of our political system is the unchanging nature of the political consensus—while the two parties agree about most all of the important things, they disagree violently about the inconsequential stuff, providing the fodder and the drama for an endless political “struggle” that plays itself out in entertaining fashion every couple of years.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

“Campaigning before three months of an election is just like studying for an exam one hour before: you never know the outcome.”
― Vikrant Adams

“Don't strive to be a great politician, but strive to be a great leader — the rewards will be far greater.”
― Vikrant Adams

“Relying on politicians for answers is like expecting a magic eight ball to solve your problems - it's more fun to shake it, but the real answers come from within! ”
― Dipti Dhakul

“It’s always the wrong women that are in power”
― Kaia Chanel

“A congressional logjam is only unavoidable when obstructionist morons put party ahead of country.”
― Stuart Woods, Smooth Operator

“Fun fact: King Cnut wasn't really trying to stop the tide. He was demonstrating to his subjects the limits of his power. Radical thing for a person to do in his position. Of course they didn't understand and he has gone done in history as a bit of a prick.”
― David Marston

“The Thatcher government aimed for much more: a reshaping of the country's entire political economy. But there was no organised body of thought or practice about how to do such a thing.
British politicians at that time had no successful post-war role models of strategic competence. Whatever their political gifts, ministers had no formal training for executive work. There was no political equivalent of the business school, no literature to help them think about the discontinuity of which even the dimmest politicians and businessmen were becoming aware. There was not even a common language for the task they had undertaken to enable ministers and their advisers to think and communicate with sufficient rigour and without misunderstandings, instead of muddling along with an armoury of empty phrases. And so, to start with, most of them had to rely, like their predecessors, on political history, traditional debating style and a collection of institutional assumptions. I suspect that, now things are more or less normal, all this will remain an immutable feature of British democratic government.”
― John Hoskyns, Just in time: Inside the Thatcher revolution

“First in opposition and later in Whitehall, there were cultural barriers to cross. Advisers from the business world were almost unheard of in Whitehall before the Thatcher years Government was confined to career politicians and their career civil servants, with a small sprinkling of journalists and academics on secondment. These four groups appeared to be the only ones entitled to enter the political playground. Their received wisdom was, and probably still is, that businessmen could never succeed in this unfamiliar environment. They tended to overlook the fact that politicians, civil servants and non-business advisers had not been particularly effective either, and that few business people had ever been allowed to take part. I shared Samuel Brittan's scepticism about 'businessmen's economics'. But I did believe that we could learn, and then perhaps offer better thinking than would otherwise be available. - page XIV”
― John Hoskyns, Just in time: Inside the Thatcher revolution

“What we said probably sounded pretty naïve even to the most open-minded of those present. Conceptual models, matrices, flow diagrams, decision trees - the bread-and-butter tool kit used by business schools and think-tanks to help them make sense of the real world in all its complexity- were unfamiliar and best disposed of by remarks of the 'politics isn't like that' variety. To say that there was no meeting of minds would be an understatement - Page 21”
― John Hoskyns, Just in time: Inside the Thatcher revolution

“Politicians seem to be more accustomed to being given words to say than thoughts to consider. Speeches are part of their everyday lives. Sustained, hard thinking about policy is often less familiar. When they are given ideas, they mistake them for speeches; and, too often, when they make speeches, they believe them to be a substitute for ideas.”
― John Hoskyns, Just in time: Inside the Thatcher revolution