Political Quotes

[niranjan]

Mahatma Gandhi

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.


A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.


The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

"The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy."

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.

[niranjan]

Mahatma Gandhi

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.


The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

"The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy."


Even If I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

[Pathless]

"If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?"

--Richard Nixon

[Pathless]

More from Nixon:

"It is necessary to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody."

and

"I know Jerry Voorhis wasn't a Communist.... I suppose there was scarcely ever a man with higher ideals than Jerry Voorhis, or better motivated.... But... I had to win. That's the thing you don't understand. The important thing is to win."

(context: Nixon waged a smear campaign against Jerry Voorhis in his 1946 bid for a Congressional position in California--his entry-level position into politics--in which he successfully branded Voorhis as a Communist)

and

"When the president does it, that means that it's not illegal."

[Pathless]

"If women in a society are weak, that weakness will affect the coming generations."

—Amma

[Pathless]

"I still love this country, but I do feel like we have lost a big chunk of our soul. That's why I went to Berlin, in a lot of ways. Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do -- unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally."

--Rufus Wainwright, in a recent interview

[Pathless]

"Although I don't feel that it's at all necessary to tell you how I feel about the principle of individuality, I know that I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life expressing it in one way or another, and I think that I'll accomplish more by expressing it on the keys of a typewriter than by letting it express itself in sudden outbursts of frustrated violence. I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able--or even have the courage--to achieve."

--Hunter S. Thompson from some letter found somewhere in his book Kingdom of Fear

[Pathless]

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

--H.L. Mencken, from a July 26, 1920 article in the Baltimore Evening Sun

[Snoopy]

Pathless, what are you suggesting?

s.

[Pathless]

Here's a 4th of July Quote from a Frenchman.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

--Marcel Proust

[Pathless]

"I strongly believe that democracy will trump totalitarianism every time."

--George W. Bush, July 10, 2007

[Pathless]

It would be too generous to call Bush an ideologue; his beliefs (unlike Cheney's, or the Project for the New American Century) don't aspire to the poisonous coherence of neoconservatism. Instead, what Bush possesses is a narcissism that he markets as a civic religion. He believes he was elected as the Defender of the Faith, and that it is we who are accountable to him, rather than he who is accountable to us.

It was Thomas Jefferson who best described what's most pernicious about belief-based leadership: "It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."

--Marty Kaplan in the Huffington Post

[Faithfulservant]

He is accountable to His creator only.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Faithfulservant

He is accountable to His creator only.

This is political? What about to the people?

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Pathless

It was Thomas Jefferson who best described what's most pernicious about belief-based leadership: "It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."

And that is wisdom.