Political Quotes - Page 236

I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

I'm not a political comedian. That's just not what I do.

To debate political objectives, views, and goals is the most American thing conceivable.

[I talk politics with Ted Turner] quite often. Usually with a great deal of excitement, because he has one political view and I have another. Despite our politics,we've agreed to be friends.

We should be able to be ourselves. Make a political stand if you want to

I've learned a few things from the tea party, both the political one and the one in Alice in Wonderland. From the first, I learned that you can make people angrily shuffle in roughly the same direction if you appeal to their beliefs in poorly defined ways. From the second, I learned that England has some sort of substance called treacle.

If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion.

Political liberty is nothing else but the diffusion of power.

There is a certain jargon, which, in French, I should call un Persiflage d'Affaires, that a foreign Minister ought to be perfectlymaster of, and may be used very advantageously at great entertainments, in mixed companies, and in all occasions where he must speak, and should say nothing. Well turned and well spoken, it seems to mean something, though in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political badinage, which prevents or removes a thousand difficulties, to which a foreign Minister is exposed in mixed conversations.

There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.

Religion-freedom-vengeance-what you will, A word's enough to raise mankind to kill.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.

But man is above all a social and political animal; his relations with his fellow human beings form his most absorbing and important interest.

I have been accused of being ignorant of economics (although I am the founder and Chairman of the Board of a company which publishes seven professional economic newsletters), of being ignorant of sociology (although I am trained in sociology and was C. Wright Mills' research assistant at Columbia), of being unable to use statistics (although I earned my living as a professional statistician for five years) and of ignoring political factors (although all my graduate training was in political science).

The political satirist usually votes against their own interests, but the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter.

Every once in a while an issue comes up where I have to make a statement. I can't totally avoid all political issues, but I try my best to minimize them. When I do make a statement, I try to be fairly neutral.

Any political historian can give innumerable examples of one percenters who have gone on to success, maybe even Bill Clinton himself?

The fine line that you do when you do political comedy is, as long as you have that laugh, you're fine.

Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. And I think that's the reason my act has become more political. I've become somewhat more of a political comic because the level of stupidity I've watched is staggering.

Political audiences are not fun.

It's a privilege to pay taxes. Yeah! It's not a political question, folks. We have to pay for stuff.

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are al ways prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.

In 2006, I became the fist American to be allowed to go visit their astronaut center in China in Beijing. I think that it makes sense for the U.S. to work with China in the future and I hope to see, if the political atmosphere between the United States and China allow for us to do more cooperation together, especially in the area of human space flight. I think in the same way that it's help improve the relations between the U.S. and Russia; it would help to improve the relations between the U.S. and China.