Politics

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Contents

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9/11

  • Pentagon Bars Testimony About Pre-9/11 Intel Identifying Hijackers. Could compromise security of Bush Administration. ~ Ironictimes.com (26 September 2005)


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Anarchism

  • Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners. ~ Edward Abbey
  • Every government does as much harm as it can, and as much good as it must. ~ Nicholas Walter
  • Anarchy is the true nature of all things. Monarchy, democracy, communism, all useless forms to control the human mind. But a mind cannot be control. It cannot be restrained. It has no boundaries. It has its will. Anarchy is the true nature of all things... ~ Alex Battig
  • Certainly the worker has nothing to lose by a change from government and capitalism to a condition of no government, of anarchy. ~ Alexander Berkman ("Is anarchy possible?" from ABC of Anarchism 1927)
  • Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government. ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon
  • We cannot acknowledge allegience to any human government... Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind... ~ William Lloyd Garrison
  • From my point of view the killing of another, except in defense of human life, is archistic, authoritarian, and therefore, no Anarchist can commit such deeds. It is the very opposite of what Anarchism stands for... ~ Joseph Labadie
  • If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. ~ Auberon Herbert
  • John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? ~ Emma Goldman
  • If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous. ~ Will Durant
  • Anarchy...stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraints of government. ~ Emma Goldman
  • Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they? Ammon Hennacy
  • Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer. ~ William Butler Yeats
  • The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state....But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune. ~ Friedrich Engels
  • I am an anarchist not because I believe anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker
  • People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a rushless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually augment one another, and they are fed from the same source. ~ Rudolf Rocker (pg. 10, Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1989 Edition, Pluto Press)
  • There are self-styled "anarcho-capitalists" (not to be confused with anarchists of any persuasion), who want the state abolished as a regulator of capitalism, and government handed over to capitalists. ~ Donald Rooum in What is Anarchism?, ISBN 0900384662
  • 'Anarchy: Don't rock the boat sink the fucker' - unknown poster
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Art

  • If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. ~ Emma Goldman
  • I must create my own System, or be enslaved by another Man's. I will not Reason and Compare — my business is to Create! ~ William Blake
  • 'Art and not morality is represented as the actual metaphysical activity of mankind' ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
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Bipartisanship, patriotism, and unity

  • America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~ President Abraham Lincoln
  • Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion. ~ Lord Acton Dalberg in 'Nationality', in The Home and Foreign Review (July 1862)
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Business and economy

  • Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as in politics. ~ W. D. Whitney
  • The alliance between business and goverment is by definition... Fascism. ~ (unknown)
  • The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you. ~ P.J. O'Rourke
  • Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation. ~ Nikolai Lenin The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism (1913)
  • The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy. ~ Howard Pyle (aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, commenting on the unemployment situation in Detroit)
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Censorship

  • Those who are responsible for the national security must be the sole judges of what the national security requires. It would be obviously undesirable that such matters should be made the subject of evidence in a court of law or otherwise discussed in public. ~ Unattributed member of the The House of Lords discussing the removal of trade union rights at GCHQ, (1984)
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Civil rights and race relations

Also see Danish People's Party

  • When was the last time you talked about race with someone of a different race? If the answer is never, you're part of the problem. ~ Bill Bradley
  • Gwinnett is a profoundly racist, anti-Semitic and corrupt county that hides behind a carefully fabricated facade (to the contrary). ~ Attorney John Matteson, Gwinnett County, Georgia (2004)
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Congress

  • I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. ~ Mark Twain
  • Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. ~ Mark Twain
  • If pro is the opposite of con, then isn't progress the opposite of congress ~ Keith Avery
  • Congress is like diapers; it should be changed regularly as it gets full of the same thing. ~ seen on a bumper sticker
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Corruption

  • Corrupt, adj.: In politics, holding an office of trust for profit. ~ unknown Not Your Average Dictionary
  • Corruption is the nightmare that keeps democracy a dream. ~ anonymous
  • The Enron scandal should launch a national movement to leash the corrupt power of money in politics so that legislators and regulators can serve the public interest. ~ The American Prospect (2002)
  • The honest politician is one who, when he is bought, stays bought. ~ U.S. Senator Simon Cameron (1862)
  • People say I steal. Well, all politicians steal. ~ Huey P. Long
  • POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
  • POLITICS, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
  • Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~ Lord Acton (1887)
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Democracy

  • Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. ~ Leon Trotsky
  • Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. ~ Gore Vidal
  • Because democracy is not a spectator sport. ~ US president election slogan, Democrats (2004)
  • Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. ~ H.L. Mencken
  • The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy. ~ Alex Carey, Australian social scientist.
  • The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. ~ Edward Dowling, Editor and Priest, Chicago Daily News (28 July 1941)
  • Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. ~ Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1947)
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Dictatorships, totalitarianism, and tyranny

  • Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. ~ Sir Winston Churchill

See video: http://www.newsgateway.ca/bush_dictator.htm

  • The people who vote decide nothing. The people who count the vote decide everything. ~ Joseph Stalin
  • Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. ~ Charlton Heston
  • There is only one difference between dictatorship and democracy. In democracy, you vote and then take orders; in dictatorship you don't waste time voting. ~ Charles Bukowski
  • Totalitarianism is never fun unless you're dear leader.
  • Wherever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship. ~ President Harry S Truman
  • What good fortune for governments that the people don't think ~ Adolf Hitler
  • Communism was a great system for making people equally poor. In fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. -The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.
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Diplomacy

  • We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
  • I feel the happiest when I can light my American cigarettes with Soviet matches. ~ Mohammed Daud Khan, President of Afghanistan, 1973-1978
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Education

  • Learn as much by writing as by reading. ~ Lord Acton
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Equality, freedom, liberty, and rights

  • Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. ~ Barry Goldwater
  • When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.' ~ Mikhail Bakunin in Statism and Anarchy
  • The difference between a republic and a people's republic is a lot like the difference between a jacket and a strait jacket. ~ Ronald Reagan
  • The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. ~ Lord Acton
  • Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. ~ Lord Acton
  • The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority. ~ Lord Acton
  • I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy unless it has in some way obstructed inter-state commerce. ~ J. Edgar Hoover
  • Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. ~ Edmund Burke
  • Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting that vote. ~ frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but it does not appear in his writings.
  • There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. ~ Ed Howdershelt
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Government Bureaucracy

  • Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant. ~ Henri Queuille, The Bureaucrat (1985)
  • The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. ~ Unknown, Civilization IV
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International affairs, United Nations, and world government

  • We're the first society in history with the option of living in a world without poverty. The fact poverty still exist says more about our political leaders than I can. ~ Clint Borgen, architect behind the movement to make poverty a political priority. http://borgenproject.org
  • I do not believe that the United States should be bound by the same rules as the smallest African nation. Life isn't like that. ~ Richard Perle, USA Pentagon advisor
  • It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. ~ Baha'u'llah
  • The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. ~ Henry Kissinger, on the election of Chilean President Salvador Allende
  • Treaties are like roses and young girls; they last while they last. ~ Charles de Gaulle;

attributed to President Charles de Gaulle, on Franco-German treaty talks, Time (12 July 1963)

  • We [the U.S.] have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of the world’s population.… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. ~ George Kennan, former member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (1948) as quoted by Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis in Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-1950 (1978)
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Freedom of speech

  • I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. ~ James Baldwin
  • If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all. ~ Noam Chomsky
  • I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)
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Liberalism

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Men and women

  • It will be years — not in my time — before a woman will become Prime Minister. ~ Margaret Thatcher (1974)
  • When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking. ~ Elaine Boosler
  • Vote for the best man but elect the best mother. Shabonee
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Misstatements and tautologies

  • When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results. ~ Calvin Coolidge (ex-president, discussing the United States economic situation in 1931)
  • If Lincoln was alive today, he'd roll over in his grave. ~ Gerald Ford
  • Things are more like they are now than they have ever been. ~ Gerald Ford
  • I love sports. Whenever I can, I always watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio. ~ Gerald Ford
  • If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. ~ Dan Quayle
  • There is a mandate to impose a voluntary return to traditional values. ~ Ronald Reagan
  • Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff. ~ Senator William Scott, during a briefing in which officials began telling him about missile silos
  • The proof is the proof, and if we have the proof, then that is the proof, and if it's a good proof it's because it's been proven. ~ Jean Chrétien
  • Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, 'Thank God I'm still alive. But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.' ~ Sen. Barbara Boxer
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Politics, Laws of Politics

  • In politics, you have your word and your friends; go back on either and you're dead. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics”
  • In volunteer politics, a builder can build faster than a destroyer can destroy. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics”
  • Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics”
  • A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. ~ Daniel Webster
  • A leader has to lead otherwise he has no business in politics. ~ Harry Truman in Memoirs
  • We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession. ~ Samuel Gompers, Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing editorial, American Federationist (May 1906)
  • All growth, including political growth, is the result of risk-taking. ~ [[Jude Wanniski] in The Wall Street Journal.
  • All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies. ~ Dr. John Arbuthnot as quoted in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922)
  • All politics are based on the indifference of the majority. ~ James Reston
  • The best politics is right action. ~ Gandhi
  • Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan in The Duenna. Act ii. Sc. 4.
  • A cult is a religion with no political power. ~ Tom Wolfe
  • Don't follow leaders, watch your parkin' meters. ~ Bob Dylan
  • Envy is the cause of political division. ~ Democritus
  • Good politics are often inextricably intertwined. ~ Morris Udall
  • I have no faith in political arithmetic. ~ Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations
  • The key to understanding the American system is to imagine that you have the power to make nearly any law you want. But your worst enemy will be the one to enforce it. ~ Rick Cook
  • Man is by nature a political animal. ~ Aristotle
  • The most important political office is that of private citizen. ~ Louis Dembitz Brandeis American Supreme Court Justice
  • No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. ~ Nikolai Lenin (1917)
  • Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. ~ John Galbraith
  • Political promises go in one year and out the other. ~ unknown
  • [C]ampaign promises are—by long democratic tradition—the least binding form of human commitment.... ~ Antonin Scalia
  • Politics is not an exact science . . . but an art. ~ Otto von Bismarck (15 March 1884)
  • Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. ~ Groucho Marx
  • Politics is the art of putting people under obligation to you. ~ Jacob L. Arvey (1990?)
  • Practical politics consists of ignoring facts. ~ Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
  • There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies. ~ Anonymous, Economist 375: 8432 (25 June 2005), p. 84
  • Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics. ~ Aristotle
  • Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness. ~ Anthony D'Angelo,

The College Blue Book

  • University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. ~ Henry Kissinger
  • Victory is a political fiction. ~ unknown
  • We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. ~ Martin L. Gross
  • The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr
  • Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. ~ Albert Einstein
  • A zebra does not change its spots. ~ Al Gore
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Political Jokes

  • The problem with political jokes is that they get elected. ~ unknown
  • The word politics is derived from the word poly meaning many and ticks meaning blood sucking parasites ~ Adrian Hilton (Author of 'The Principality and Power of Europe')
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Politicians and lawyers

  • The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy. ~ Edwin W. Edwards
  • A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground. ~ H.L. Mencken
  • Politics is the entertainment industry for ugly people. ~ Mark Turpin
  • Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
  • They [the people] may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Carl W. Buechner
  • In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away — For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. ~ Lewis Carroll
  • The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. ~ Winston Churchill
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Power and money

  • In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom. ~ Ralph Reed, head of Christian Coalition, in memo to Enron executives, (2000)
  • Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better. ~ Justin Dart, chairman, Port Industries (1982)
  • Politics has gotten so expensive that it takes a lot of money to even get beat with. ~ Will Rogers (1931)
  • There are two things you need for success in politics. Money... and I can't think of the other. ~ Senator Mark Hannah (R-OH), 1903
  • Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~ P.J. O'Rourke
  • Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely
  • Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat. ~ John Lehman
  • All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from the want of honor or virtue, so much as the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. ~ John Adams
  • Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits. ~ Josiah Stamp, Governor of the Bank of England (1920)
  • I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. ~ Woodrow Wilson
  • If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson
  • History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. ~ James Madison
  • If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. ~ Andrew Jackson
  • 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, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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Presidency

  • PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
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(Polls), Public opinion

  • That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion. ~ Thomas Huxley in "Universities, Actual & Ideal"
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Public safety, domestic security, and gun control

  • The streets are safe in Philadelphia — it's only the people who make them unsafe. ~ Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia
  • Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak. ~ George Orwell
  • It's not about guns — it's about control.
  • A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. ~ Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr (1785) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
  • No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. ~ Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (1776)
  • [The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. ~ James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
  • Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. ~ Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
  • The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned. ~ Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1790
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Public service

  • If there is anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public. ~ Anonymous
  • People must act with conviction. Where there is no conviction, there cannot be honorable action. ~ spheresector.com
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Reform

  • History is a long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. ~ Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
  • Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ President John F. Kennedy
  • Reform is not for the shortwinded. ~ Arthur Vanderbilt, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice (1949)
  • The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. ~ Albert Einstein
  • Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein
  • A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable cry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. ~ Thomas Paine (1776)
  • Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. ~ Joseph Campbell
  • It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. ~ Winston Churchill
  • Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~ Confucius
  • You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. ~ Peter F. Hamilton (through character Endron) in The Neutronium Alchemist
  • Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~ Dale Carnegie
  • Reason accepts no authority above itself and is necessarily subversive... ~ Allan Bloom
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Campaign finance reform

  • Today's political campaigns function as collection agencies for broadcasters. You simply transfer money from contributors to television stations. ~ Senator Bill Bradley, 2000
  • We've got a real irony here... We have politicians selling access to something we all own — our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own — our airwaves. It's a terrible system. ~ Newton Minow, former Federal Communications Commission chairman (2000)
  • Unless we fundamentally change this system, ultimately campaign finance will consume our democracy. ~ Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) (1996)
  • [Buckley v. Valeo is] one of the most weakly reasoned, poorly written, initially contradictory court opinions I've ever read. ~ Senator (and former federal district court judge) George J. Mitchell (D-ME) (1990)
  • We don't buy votes. What we do is we buy a candidate's stance on an issue. ~ Allen Pross, executive director, California Medical Association's PAC (1989)
  • Political action committees and moneyed interests are setting the nation's political agenda... Are we saying that only the rich have brains in this country? Or only people who have influential friends who have money can be in the Senate? ~ Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (1988)
  • The day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 today. ~ George Washington Plunkett (1905)
  • Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor... not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and propitious fortune. ~ James Madison, Federalist 57 (1788)
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Religion, Separation of church and state

  • Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics. ~ Wendell Phillips
  • The neoconservative revival is a profound and, in many ways, a heartening phenomenon... For the neoconservative sees through the emptiness of the present and the poverty of the modern subject. The neoconservative knows that a present without past memory and tradition is self-illusory and finally self-destructive. The neoconservative knows that a subject without community and tradition is very soon little else that the modern possessive individual rendered passive and historyless. The neoconservative sees the folly of the Enlightenment’s wholesale attack on the very concept of tradition. She or he senses the unreality of the assumed universalism in Western liberal social-evolutionary schemas applied to history. The neoconservative notes the wasteful and complacent obstruction of the rich resources of the tradition. She or he knows the need to retrieve these resources anew in our parlous times if we are to maintain any truly Christian identity at all. ~ David Tracy, On Naming the Present
  • Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. ~ Jamie Raskin, 2006-03-01
    • Raskin was responding to state senator Nancy Jacobs at a hearing on a proposed Maryland constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage [1]. At the time, Raskin was himself a candidate for senate.
  • The true destiny of America is religious, not political: it is spiritual, not physical. ~ Alvin R. Dyer in Ensign (November 1968)
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Truth, honesty, integrity, and transparency

  • [In the West] unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban. ~ George Orwell
  • This is something, eh, that is the kind of thing that must be gone through with what I believe is best not talked about too much until we know whatever answers there will be. ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, responding to questions about the investigation of J. Robert Oppenheimer's supposed Communist sympathies
  • We mistakenly quoted Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison calling for accountability from top White House aides Libby and Rove by saying, 'Something needs to be said that is a clear message that the rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray.' In fact, when Senator Hutchison made the remarks, she was calling for accountability from President Clinton in 1999. More recently, in regard to accountability for Libby and Rove, she referred to perjury as a 'technicality.' We regret any confusion caused by our error. ~ Ironictimes.com
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Voting and participation

  • Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair. ~ George Burns
  • If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us. ~ Francis Bacon
  • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ~ Edmund Burke
  • It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. ~ Robert H. Jackson, United States Attorney General & Assoc. Justice
  • The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ~ Albert Einstein
  • If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ~ Emma Goldman
  • I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. ~ Confucius
  • Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. ~ Confucius
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War, military, and peace

  • Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. ~ Albert Einstein
  • The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. ~ Robert Lynd
  • How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. ~ Marcus Aurelius
  • If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say 'No' to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses. ~ Louis Lecoin, French pacifist leader
  • It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. ~ Buddha
  • Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~ Albert Einstein
  • The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service. ~ Albert Einstein
  • Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed. ~ Mao Tse-tung
  • There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. ~ Havelock Ellis
  • This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. ~ Dwight Eisenhower
  • To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. ~ Sir Winston Churchill
  • War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. ~ John Stuart Mill
  • War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off. ~ Karl Kraus
  • Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago. ~ Colman McCarthy
  • We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart. ~ Albert Einstein
  • Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy. ~ George Kennan (1987)
  • The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies. ~ Basil O'Connor
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Iraq War

  • And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again. ~ Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, on Good Morning America (18 March 2003)
  • Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. ~ ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson (July 6 2003)
  • By invading Iraq, the president has greatly undermined the war on terrorism. ~ Richard A. Clarke, former National Security Council Special Advisor (24 March 2004)
  • Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. ~ George W. Bush in Cinncinati (October 2002)
  • He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983. ~ Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser (18 February 1998)
  • History is made by angry minorities, not by passive majorities. ~ Fareed Zakaria on insurgent action in Iraq, This Week with George Stephanopoulos (15 August 2004)
  • Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies. ~ Madeline Albright Clinton Secretary of State, (10 November 1999)
  • I asked for universal health care and all I got was this lousy stealth bomber. ~ a protester's plaque
  • I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. ~ Ken Adelman, defense policy board member (13 Febuary 2002)
  • I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it. ~ Madeleine Albright, May 12, 1996 — On whether the cost to the Iraqi people, due to sanctions against Iraq, including the deaths of children, could be justified.
  • I think these people are the last remnants of a dying cause. ~ Paul Wolfowitz (18 June 2003)
  • I voted for the 87 billion, before I voted against it ~ John Kerry
  • If you are looking at a map of the world and wondering where the United States is, you can find it over there, trapped between Iraq and a hard place. ~ John Bell Smithback, writer of Idiom-Magic (15 July 2005)
  • In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. ~ Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D, NY) (10 October 2002)
  • Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. ~ Al Gore, (September 2002)
  • Iraq will not require sustained aid. ~ Mitch Daniels, (28 March 2003)
  • It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year. ~ Ambassador Joseph Wilson, (6 May 2003) in an anonymous interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, on the absence of evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or weapons.
  • Japan is the second largest donor in Iraq after the United States, with over $5 billion dollars for humanitarian, infrastructure and reconstruction projects. ~ Michael K. Simpson
  • There is a possibility, Rockefeller says, that the fabrication of these [Niger] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq. ~ Senator Jay Rockefeller (D. WVa) (21 March 2003), writing to FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for an investigation of the Niger letters.
  • My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. ~ Dick Cheney (16 March 2003)
  • Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. ~ Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), (16 December 1998)
  • Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. ~ Secretary of State Colin Powell (24 February 2001)
  • Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam now has weapons of mass destruction. ~ Dick Cheney, vice president of USA, (26 August 2002)
  • The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons... ~ Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV) (3 October 2002)
  • We are able to keep his [Saddam's] arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt. NSC advisor Condoleezza Rice (29 July 2001)
  • We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. ~ Condoleezza Rice, (10 September 2002)
  • We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. ~ Condoleezza Rice (September 2002)
  • We know where [the weapons] are. They're in an area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, north and south somewhat. ~ Donald Rumsfeld (30 March 2003)
  • You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness. ~ Donald Rumsfeld (9 April 2004)
  • The Dick Cheney shooting incident shows what happens when you put the kids in charge of the kindergarten and let them play with guns. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo show what happens when you put them in charge of other kids without responsible adult supervision. The Iraq war shows what happens when you put the lunatics in charge of the asylum and let them play with real armies. ~ Letter to the editor, The Age Newspaper (Australia) (20 February 2006)
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See also

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