Just because you are not interested in politics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.
Interpretation
Politics affects everyone, regardless of personal interest in it.
This quote by Pericles emphasizes the idea that individual apathy toward politics does not exempt one from its consequences. It serves as a reminder that political decisions and actions impact all aspects of society, and disengagement from political matters can lead to unfavorable outcomes for those who choose to ignore them.
In practice
During a community meeting about local policies.
For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.
Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.
Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
Those who are politically apathetic can only survive if they are supported by people who are capable of taking action.
For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.
For a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.
America is the moral force that defeated communism and all those who would put the human soul itself into bondage.
The political lives of tyrants play out human affairs with a special intensity: the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power.
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
Until politics are a branch of science, we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.
I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.
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