Quotes on Politics

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

The President is always abused. If he isn't, he isn't doing anything.

It's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. It's an old political trick. But this time it won't work.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long.