All Quotes By Tag: Political-science
“State first, subject second, statesman last.”
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“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.”
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“Please rephrase my presence to illustrate persistence. Please rephrase my presence to illustrate resistance. With the ups and downs of a realist’s existence, please rephrase the sentence to illustrate indifference.”
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“Most people wait until retirement to think about the ideas I tackle. I couldn’t wait that long. What good is the truth when death knocks at the door? I desire to live truthful so I knocked first.”
“My beliefs and my wants are not the same as popular thought—those built inside the box. Mine, built and born outside, are known to throw uppercuts.”
“Through public policy, we can journey down a road less traveled. Through public policy, we can remedy the many problems. But first, public policy should be written to serve the public. Regrettably, the politicians fiddle while we, the new Romans, slowly turn to ashes.”
“I don’t want to live and die a lie. So I sacrifice… I try… I live against the wind and pretend to fly.”
“The world can be a better place. The problems that plague are manmade. However, the people able to elevate human living, those few with the resources, influence, technology, time, and power, are preoccupied with something else, or they benefit from the status quo. Nothing else can explain their lack of action. Or perhaps, they lack the vision. If the latter is correct, the solution is simple, read my work. But if the former is so, which I think is true, then there is little hope for the common people. Unless of course, God intervenes and pushes the reset button to this video game called life. Or the people affected by the backwardness mobilize and retake their natural rights.”
“Since the earliest days of our youth, we have been conditioned to accept that the direction of the herd, and authority anywhere — is always right.”
“Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes — or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist — not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”
“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”
“This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.”
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“The real enemy” is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists.”
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“This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power. (Žižek, S. “Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks.” London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. )”
“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”
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