All Quotes By Tag: Politics

“I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. … These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”

“No matter what argument you make against evolution, the response is Well, you know, it’s possible to believe in evolution and believe in God. Yes, and it’s possible to believe in Spiderman and believe in God, but that doesn’t prove Spiderman is true.”

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”

“My religion is life, my philosophy happiness, my politics friendship.”

“Only those who show up have a right to speak up.”

“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.”

“No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.”

“If we aren’t willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren’t willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.”

“The foundation and cornerstone of state leadership is power of the people.”

“When a comedy of Plautus is being played, and the household slaves are cracking trivial jokes together, ou propose to come on stage in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat Seneca’s speech to Nero from the Octavia. Wouldn’t it be better to take a silent role than to say something wholly inappropriate, and thus turn the play into a tragi-comedy? You pervert a play and ruin it when you add irrelevant speeches, even if they are better than the play itself. So go through with the drama in hand as best you can, and don’t spoil it all just because you happen to think of another that would be better.”

“Change is not only a topic of discussion, transformative change is effected through action.”

“Adhering too blindly and unyieldingly to a particular party is detrimental to the wellfare of humanity. We should be discerning, watching for candidates who have a career of demonstrable justice, wisdom, compassion and goodness. Otherwise you become recordings of a party line incapable of standing up to an associated group should they legitimately be screwing up. It just becomes about BEING right instead of doing right.”

“Immer wieder behauptete Unwahrheiten werden nicht zu Wahrheiten, sondern, was schlimmer ist, zu Gewohnheiten.”

“It is no coincidence that precisely when things started going downhill with the gods, politics gained its bliss-making character. There would be no reason for objecting to this, since the gods, too were not exactly fair. But at least people saw temples instead of termite architecture. Bliss is drawing closer; it is no longer in the afterlife, it will come, though not momentarily, sooner or later in the here and now – in time.The anarch thinks more primitively; he refuses to give up any of his happiness. “Make thyself happy” is his basic law. It his response to the “Know thyself” at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. These two maxims complement each other; we must know our happiness and our measure.”

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.”