Political Quotes - Page 76

The unforgivable political sin is vanity, the killer diet is sour grapes.

I don't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs.

We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

When you look at the consequences of climate change, at rainforest deforestation, at antibiotic resistance, these are not necessarily political issues, but rather issues that have the ability to threaten our species.

The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.

The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

I think every single thing we do is political. Even if you go to the shops and buy a packet of biscuits, then you're buying into the system, willingly or not. I think we're conditioned into thinking political systems as being either communism or capitalism. I think there are a lot more options available. We just haven't explored them.

To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another.

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.

In Stalin each [Soviet bureaucrat] easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.

It is easier for a political party to attain national ballot status in Russia today than it is for the Libertarian party or the Green party to get on the ballot in, say, Pennsylvania.

If we act together on the drug problem, with a comprehensive vision devoid of ideological or political biases, we will be able to prevent much harm and violence!

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.

Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.

You can’t solve a spiritual problem with a military or political solution.

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.

A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.