Politics is like trying to screw a cat in the ass.
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We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes wi...
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. To forget it! You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. But the Solar System! I protested. What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
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The ordinary reverence, the reverence defined and explained by the dictionary, costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred things--parents, religion, flag, laws and respect for one's own beliefs--these are feelings which we cannot even help. They come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in breathing. But the reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you pay, without compulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not yours. You can't revere his gods or his politics, and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect his belief in them if you tried hard enough; and you could respect him, too, if you tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays, because we can't burn him.
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How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?
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Throw away those books and cassettes on inspirational leadership. Send those consultants packing. Know your job, set a good example for the people under you and put results over politics. That's all the charisma you'll really need to succeed.
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I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If...
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Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.
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You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
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OZOCRACY - Watch the spectacle (or divisive, polarizing issue) we, the politicians, have created or pointed out, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The politicians have us casting votes for them based on issues like lipsticked pigs, teen pregnancy, duplicitous social class polarization, who is the truer American, who is a homosexual, race and religion etc. while they steal us blind and violate the Public Trust. (Term is based on this scene from The Wizard of Oz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.squidoo.com%2FUSA_VOTERS_VOTE_NO_TO_GOVERNMENT_CORRUPTION_THIS_ELECTION&feature=player_embedded
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Politics is a bit like washing windows. No matter what side you are on, the dirt is always on the other side.
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You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
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There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.
Politics
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The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of ...
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We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.
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Political life in our country has plowed in muddy channels, and needs the infusion of clearer and cleaner waters. I am not sure that women are...
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Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
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You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
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Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.
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There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.
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Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
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A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.
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The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.
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Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.
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Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to ...
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If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry Muse Puts confusion in my brain.
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No matter your politics, ... Love Bush or hate him. You have to support the men and women. ... I think Mrs. Sheehan is disrespecting the memory of her child. It's disrespectful. Her son made the choice (to be in the military).
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We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind -- mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.
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Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere -- so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive -- that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
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Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
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