Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.
When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through.
During the 2008 campaign, I strongly endorsed Barack Obama for president. I did so early, when many Democratic leaders - including many prominent African-American politicians - believed the safe bet was to back then-front-runner Hillary Clinton.
If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
When I was young, all the politicians looked like ancient Latin teachers or greengrocers. They were mumbly, stumbly men with their hair blowing in their eyes, walking into trees, opening the wrong door. They had no idea how to present themselves.
I probably owe my political dismay to New Labour, but also my growing sense that the satirical shape of human affairs is international and historical, not glued to the tawdry ambitions of a team of politicians who represent nothing but themselves.
When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.
Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.
As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.
For a profession that holds dear both the ability to vivisect politicians in prose and the expectation that these carved-up subjects will not complain, the media is horribly thin-skinned and vengeance-seeking when on the receiving end of criticism.
Too many of the career politicians, the established politicians in Washington on both sides of the aisle, are representing their party more than the people. And no matter what the media says, the ballot box will determine what people truly believe.
As much as I dislike Trump, I have to admit that his campaign took off because he seemed real and unscripted to a lot of voters. He wasn't rehearsed, senatorial, or buttoned up. That resonated with people who are distrustful of today's politicians.
Politicians always think they know what people feel. It's a fallacy, because there is no such thing as 'the people.' It is a discursive device for summoning the people that you want. You're constructing the people, you're not reflecting the people.
Governments do not care about your Facebook-assembled opinion. Incompetent politicians don't read your tweets; there are reasons for them being out of touch. Change does not come about for 'likes' on a page, though the ideas for it may start there.
Young people, our rights and the things we care about, have been taken away because it doesn't really matter to the politicians whether or not we have them. We're just another demographic to try and please, but there's no point if we aren't voting.
The short-term vision is: I research on something which I can use tomorrow, and for some politicians it is even better if it's today. But if you do this, you can only do targeted research. If you only do targeted research, you lose the side-routes.
When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.
You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.
I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we - we own this country. We - we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.
NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.
In the restaurant business, you never want to have enemies, whereas it seems that many politicians judge their success by how high their enemies are and whether they can show that they can hold their ground and give a punch for every punch they take.
Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses.
Politicians are nauseating by definition... They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.
You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again.
I really don't like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they're horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They'd better sort themselves out and become more womanly.
I am a patriot. I would think there are no politicians who are not patriots. Since I am a politician, I often get criticized as I try to exercise what I believe to be right. However, if you mind such criticism, I think you can't protect people's lives.
The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.
McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who'd had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously.
Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.
The choices politicians make must be based on values - not an arbitrary, axe-wielding approach to public spending or a dismal exchange between Gordon Brown and David Cameron about percentages that sounds like an argument between different book-keepers.
The NRA is funded by weapons manufacturers, and those same manufacturers know that they stand to lose some business if we pass common-sense gun legislation. As a result, the NRA contributes money to politicians to ensure that gun control never happens.
I've come to see that these politicians that release books - no way are they actually writing those books. Not when they are working fulltime, too. There's no way. That's their name on the book, but it's not their work. I'm sure of that. There's no way.
We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.
I had my freedom, and I had my comfortable life, but I couldn't accept the fact that the politicians were making it increasingly difficult for my kids and millions of others to achieve their dreams as I had achieved mine. So, in 2012, I ran for president.
You look at what animates Democratic voters; you look at what animates Democratic politicians: it's health care. It's increasingly climate. It is wages and economic issues. It's issues around reproductive freedom and criminal justice reform and inequality.
Politicians are very experienced - maybe too experienced - at using body language to signal power and competence. But what these politicians are much more likely to struggle with, or just neglect to do altogether, is communicate warmth and trustworthiness.
This is the fundamental problem with the ruling class in Washington, D.C. - the party bosses, the K Street crowd, the lobbyists who control all these politicians. They will do anything to maintain their power. They will do anything. They will say anything.
In American politics, there's a recurring fantasy, nurtured by the press, about 'courageous' politicians who do the right thing against their political interest. But really, isn't it even more encouraging when the right thing has just become good politics?
Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They're destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.
When I am disgusted by certain American politicians, I fantasize moving away to Finland - a country in which I have worked a little, and which I see as a pure blue and green place of unpolluted lakes, peaceful forests, and pristine social-democratic values.
We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
I don't even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance. No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians.
We're quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as 'crazy,' and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I've long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense.
Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'
There were two mentalities, and both mentalities had to change. There was what I called the Afrikaner mind set of the Unionist politicians, which was holding all power in their own hands, and discriminating, and their objective was to protect their identity.
The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.
One of the bad things about bad behavior by politicians (particularly by Donald Trump, because he's president, but by others as well) is that it not only can encourage bad behavior by politicians of all ideological stripes but also can be cited to justify it.
I think that all politicians who aspire to the presidency are a little nuts, but for different reasons. What kind of person aspires to be the most powerful person in the world? The answer is someone with an internal drive that is so dynamic and so determined.
The exciting quality about Joyce is that when you read him, you are not told of the large public issues that were agitating the minds of politicians and journalists on those days. Joyce is interested in the mind of a man who has put five shillings on a horse.