It is an axiom of political life that you never raise expectations, whether in a political or military campaign, because your defeats are then magnified and your victories discounted.
Interpretation
One should avoid raising expectations to prevent disappointment in failures and underappreciation of successes.
This quote emphasizes the importance of managing expectations in the realm of politics and military campaigns. By keeping expectations low, political leaders can avoid the pitfalls of disappointment when things do not go as planned, ensuring that both victories are appreciated and defeats are not overly magnified in the public perception.
In practice
During a political debate, this quote could serve to remind candidates to be realistic about their promises.
If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying, 'Well, I got swindled here.'
I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.
You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.
When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.
Just because you are not interested in politics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.
Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.
The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election . . . They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided.
We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism
If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
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