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.
Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.
There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.
When the only people in mainstream discourse who care about the working class are Wall Street investors, it really is time to ask where our politics went wrong.
Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down.
The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.
If elected members of any body - whether it's a state house or Congress - were not willing to take career-ending or at least election-losing votes, I would not have the right to vote today.
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