Political Philosophy Quotes - Page 2

It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.

There's something immoral about abandoning your common sense in matters of social importance.

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression...

Fear mankind most when he fights with a consuming passion for what he perceives to be true." ~ Demo Cratia.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Politics is clueless; I can claim -"I am a politician" only because I am not.

Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.

If you are my food, how am I supposed to feel pity towards you? That would mean starvation for me. “A hungry leopard told a fallen, panting, imploring gazelle

My commitment is to urge us all toward moderation and good will toward fellow citizens. If we can set aside unworthy emotions that deepen our political divide, concentrate on finding solutions to the problems our country and communities face, we can then work toward a brighter future with less rancor but firm in our purpose. Or, we can feed our primitive fight or flight impulse by lashing out in social media and then duck into our silos. If we do that, the unhealthy polarization of the time of Trump will get even worse.

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

Political corruption works by having an equally corrupt legal system to protect it.

The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.

Politicians know it's a game of power, every politician at every level, even in the common of mortals.

...our great modern error is the belief that we must invariably give up one thing in order to have another. But it is possible, for instance, to find comfort, pleasure, and beauty in food, clothing, and shelter. It is possible to find pleasure and beauty and even "recreation" in work. It is possible to have farms that do not waste and poison the natural world.

You don't die when your body stops functioning. You die when your name is uttered for the last time in the world.

Politics is the art of promising heaven and delivering purgatory, and claiming hero status for saving your country from hell.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Politics, it's all corrupt!

Can anyone maintain power without lying? It looks to me like living without breathing. Morality apart, I think some evils are part and parcel of nature and we cannot do without them. Sometimes evil is even necessary to run this evil nature.

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.

A prince ... is only the first servant of the state, who is obliged to act with probity and prudence. ... As the sovereign is properly the head of a family of citizens, the father of his people, he ought on all occasions to be the last refuge of the unfortunate.

Cathy smiled back ‘Rules were meant to be broken.’‘Don’t disagree,’ Oversteegen replied immediately. ‘Indeed they are. Providin’, however, that the one breakin’ the rules is willin’ t’ pay the price for it, and the price gets charged in full. Which you were, Lady Catharine. I saluted you for it then–at the family dinner table that night, in fact. My mother was infinitely more indisposed thereafter; tottered back t’ her bed cursin’ me for an ingrate. My father was none too pleased either. I salute you for it, again. Otherwise, breakin’ rules becomes the province of brats instead of heroes. Fastest way I can think t’ turn serious political affairs int’ a playpen. A civilized society needs a conscience, and conscience can’t be developed without martyrs—real ones—against which a nation can measure its crimes and sins.

Power hungry=life loving

If the surprise outcome of the recent UK referendum - on whether to leave or remain in the European Union - teaches us anything, it is that supposedly worthy displays of democracy in action can actually do more harm than good. Witness a nation now more divided; an intergenerational schism in the making; both a governing and opposition party torn to shreds from the inside; infinitely more complex issues raised than satisfactory solutions provided. It begs the question 'Was it really all worth it' ?

Politics preys on people's naivety

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.

Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,History is but the shadow of their shame,Art veils her glass, or from the pageant startsAs to oblivion their blind millions fleet,Staining that Heaven with obscene imageryOf their own likeness. What are numbers knitBy force or custom? Man who man would be,Must rule the empire of himself; in itMust be supreme, establishing his throneOn vanquished will, quelling the anarchyOf hopes and fears, being himself alone.

..it happens in all human affairs that we never seek to escape one mischief without falling into another. Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage, and in accepting a less evil as a good.

The powerful are like a compressor, they will grind into paste everything on their way

Don't ask me to pray, instead ask me to act.

Every politician brings in a wide range of context, promises and characters to bring his mission of you to listen to his words and vote for him and later he won't listen to you at any range.

Only a person who perceives that all human beings are important can become a great leader.

Politicians are not afraid of their mistakes, they are afraid their mistakes will not succeed

​On top of the government-hierarchy you need an unpolluted group of scientists to give a nation the best direction.

Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.

Only a self capable of being jolted out of its mundane complacency is up to the task of both hearing what repair demands and helping to invent new responses to harms that no preexisting remedy fully comprehends.

The IGAD-Plus's compromise peace agreement is probably pregnant with a noisy, perhaps thunderous baby.

Most politicians are corrupt as they do not represent the masses that voted for them, but rather they choose to return numerous favors to the corporations that funded their election campaigns.

There is danger in speaking so generally about "liberalism," a danger that has often plagued feminist debates. "Liberalism" is not a single position but a family of positions; Kantian liberalism is profoundly different from classical Utilitarian liberalism, and both of these from the Utilitarianism currently dominant in neoclassical economics.

Can anyone name a president who really had the citizens in mind during the majority of his decisions in office? None of them did, and the current ones don’t either. It’s all about power, keeping power, and dishing out power to those who throw the most money at them.

Anarchy is law and freedom without force.Despotism is law and force without freedom.Barbarism force without freedom and law.Republicanism is force with freedom and law.

The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal.

I am the interpretation of the prophetI am the artist in the coffinI am the brave flag stained with bloodI am the wounds overcomeI am the dream refusing to sleepI am the bare-breasted voice of libertyI am the comic the insult and the laughI am the right the middle and the leftI am the poached eggs in the skyI am the Parisian streets at nightI am the dance that swings till dawnI am the grass on the greener lawnI am the respectful neighbour and the graceful manI am the encouraging smile and the helping handI am the straight back and the lifted chinI am the tender heart and the will to winI am the rainbow in rainI am the human who won’t die in vainI am Athena of Greek mythologyI am the religion that praises equalityI am the woman of stealth and affectionI am the man of value and compassionI am the wild horse ploughing throughI am the shoulder to lean ontoI am the Muslim the Jew and the ChristianI am the Dane the French and the PalestinianI am the straight the square and the roundI am the white the black and the brownI am the free speech and the free pressI am the freedom to expressI will die for my right to be all the above here mentionedAnd should threat encounter I’ll pull my pencil

Black people are not the descendants of kings. We are—and I say this with big pride—the progeny of slaves. If there’s any majesty in our struggle, it lies not in fairy tales but in those humble origins and the great distance we’ve traveled since. Ditto for the dreams of a separate but noble past. Cosby’s, and much of black America’s, conservative analysis flattens history and smooths over the wrinkles that have characterized black America since its inception.

While some people are enraged over opposing facts as an attack on their belief system and integrity, I take them as an ADDITION to mine!12/13/14

If you are a leader or someone who works for the interest of a community, first make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community. In this way, you will have a good chance of minimizing, perhaps, avoiding the us versus them mentality.

The Golden Mean is for the weakling, it was not meant for the likes of Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Pharaohs, or Hitlers of the world

But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

Politicians are a breed of the human race who believe they know everything

Ineffective leadership, is the plight of followers who anoint power to the autocratic persons who's visions are not founded but are rather arbitrary in their nature.

I dream of a world where Science shapes the structure of a society, rather than politics.

There is a large gap between being an activist out of the idealism that comes from books, conversations, the fire of youth and being one because you have lived through the depredations that life has thrown at you.

The universe runs on the principle that one who can exert the most evil on other creatures runs the show.

Fear, that’s the great motivator though. Fear keeps it all in check. Fear of one’s neighbor. Fear of those who don’t look like you. Fear of those who live in some barren desert halfway across the globe,” Sean continued. “Domestic terrorism, just as much as fear of those abroad has helped people accept more intrusion into their everyday lives. To accept less freedom as freedom itself.

Some days of my vagabond life I read Arthur Schopenhauer and others Friedrich Nietzsche. I was a humble learner – an empty vessel - at the feet of the legends of human history. I was a seeker of truth, travelling through time while quenching my thirst for knowledge. And a humble learner of today becomes a strong leader of tomorrow.

Let the government not be an instructor but a parent who loves and adjusts to the needs of the nation, But remember a parent does what makes things look good to the entire family without segregation.

Theory -the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well as the trees- theory can be a dew that rises from earth and collects in the rain cloud and returns to earth over and over. But if it doesn't smell of the earth, it isn't good for earth. -Notes Toward a Politics of Location

Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.