Quotes about politics

Well aware of both the continuity and contingency of human affairs, Adams and Madison searched the works of Tacitus and Voltaire and Locke like carpenters rummaging through their assortment of tools, knowing that all the pediments were jury-rigged, all the provisional, all the alliances temporary.

Politics is nothing but common action to secure more favorable living conditions.

He listened to a series of angry recriminations and contradictory statements by different politicians, all of whom blamed the disorders on their opponents. The Volitionalists spoke of the Statisticalists as “insane criminals” and “underminers of social stability,” and the Statisticalists called the Volitionalists “reactionary criminals” and “enemies of social progress.” Politicians, he had observed, differed little in their vocabularies from one time-line to another.

Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.

“If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.”

Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.

The idiots always rose to the top and made policy.

It explained a lot of things.

In the larger scale of things, his opinions didn’t count anyhow. The politicians made the decisions, and the voters paid no attention.

Politicians always seemed to be willing to sacrifice the general welfare to win votes.

Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.

His (Deschamps’) complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.