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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"For me, the political part of being an actor is very tough. To sit somewhere and tell somebody why you should feel this way or that way about my character does not feel like my responsibility. It feels like the responsibility of the writer and the person who created it."
"All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens."
"The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient."
"There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives."
"War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another."
"Feminism as a political movement has to specifically address the needs of men in their struggle to revolutionize their consciousness."
"The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind."
"Why is it that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action?"
"Damn your principles! Stick to your party."
"You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."
"I detest politics, to be honest with you. It's a cesspool. And I don't think I would fare well in that cesspool because I don't believe in political correctness and I certainly don't believe in dishonesty."
"We cannot learn men from books."
"If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory."
"As for our majority... one is enough."
"The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame,-a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others."
"There is no gambling like politics."
"The first mistake in public business is the going into it."
"If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs."
"He collected audiences around him, and flourished and exhibited and harangued."
"There's been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I'm speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing. Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging."
