Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
The depositary of power is always unpopular.
Interpretation
Those who hold power often face criticism and unpopularity.
Benjamin Disraeli's quote highlights the notion that individuals or groups who have authority, responsibility, or power are frequently subjected to discontent and unpopularity. This perception may stem from the difficult decisions they must make, which may not always align with the public's desires or expectations, leading to dissent and criticism despite the necessity of their roles.
In practice
In a political debate discussing the challenges faced by leaders, one could quote Disraeli to emphasize the difficulties of governance.
Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
The ultimate victory of tomorrow is democracy, and through democracy with education, for no people in all the world can be kept eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.
Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.
The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.
Restore, without delay, the equilibrium between revenue and expenditures, which has done so much to destroy our credit and derange the whole fabric of government. If that should not be done, the government and country will be involved, ere long, in overwhelming difficulties.
If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.
Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question.
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