Quotes about politics

The feminist movement is the first to combine effectively the ‘personal’ with the ‘political’. It is developing a new way of relating, a new political style, one that will eventually reconcile the personal – always the feminine prerogative – with the public, with the ‘world outside’, to restore that world to its emotions, and literally to its senses.

At one time, Washington actually meant something. But now, it's about as relevant as Bob Dylan's tuning fork.

It was a programming technique that had been reverse-engineered from the sort of psychotic mental blocks that otherwise perfectly normal people had been observed invariably to develop when elected to high political office.

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

The President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

“That’s insane,” Lanier said.

“Not very. It’s politics.”

I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.

Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.

We see then that if one side cannot completely disarm the other, the desire for peace on either side will rise and fall with the probability of further successes and the amount of effort these would require. If such incentives were of equal strength on both sides, the two would resolve their political disputes by meeting half way. If the incentive grows on one side, it should diminish on the other. '''Peace will result so long as their sum total is sufficient — though the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.

Our discussion has shown that while in war many different roads can lead to the goal, to the attainment of the political object, fighting is the only possible means.

Whatever the explicit strategic or political aims of a war may be, they prove to be weak in comparison with its aims of destruction; what war destroys first are the very restrictions imposed on destructive license. If we can rightly speak about the unstated “aim” of war, it is neither primarily to alter the political landscape nor to establish a new political order, but rather to destroy the social basis of politics itself.