Quotes on Politics

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perennially rejuvenated illusions.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

In politics, nothing is contemptible.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a dictator substitutes himself for the central committee.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

I believe that a worthwhile life is defined by a kind of spiritual journey and a sense of obligation.

Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior.

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.

A government of laws, and not of men.

Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.