Political quotes
7.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside political — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act."
"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along."
"The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy."
"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. ... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened."
"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
"Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner."
"A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization."
"The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead."
"Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance."
"The current tax code is a daily mugging."
"Change no man’s religion, change no man’s politics, interrupt the sovereignty of no nation. Instead, teach Man to use what he has and what he knows to the factual creation, within any political reference, of a civilization on Earth for the first time."
"The history of the human race, viewed as a whole, may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed."
"Every organization of men, be it social or political, ultimately relies on man's capacity for making promises and keeping them."
"There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America."
"I do believe that political arrangements which are based upon violence, intimidation and theft will eventually break down - and will deserve to do so."
"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."
"Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent."
"Prosperity is the best protector of principle."
"The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter."
"While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago."
