Quotes on Politics

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.

You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.

I doubt very much if a man whose main literary interests were in works by Mr. Zane Grey, admirable as they may be, is particularly equipped to be the chief executive of this country, particularly where Indian Affairs are concerned.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

I opposed the Suez war, I opposed the Falklands war. I opposed the Libyan bombing and I opposed the Gulf war and I never believed that any of those principled arguments lost a single vote - indeed, I think they gained support though that was not why you did it. What has been lacking in Labour politics over a long period is a principled stand

The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.

I never make a distinction between private life and politics - that's a petit bourgeois thing. How can you make a stand against Nazi Germany, or in Rwanda, when you live life by making that distinction?

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.