I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.
Interpretation
The speaker considers American politics to be a noble field worthy of discussion and analysis.
In this quote, Theodore White expresses his belief that American politics is a significant and honorable pursuit, akin to an art form. He conveys a sense of duty and passion for writing about politics, suggesting that engaging with this subject is not only important but also a meaningful endeavor that reflects the complexities of society and governance.
In practice
In a speech about civic engagement at a community event.
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
Look: I don't want to live with a nuclear Iran. I would like to make it uncomfortable for them to seek it.
It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.
I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display.
It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system.
If Obama's enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country's first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop's foundational generation.
America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.
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