Politics Quotes - Page 12

The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: "The church may not mix in politics." he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God. -From the diary of Diet Eman

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

When someone gives me either a democratic or republican pamphlet, I throw it in their face. I’m a librarian, damn it! We only take book donations.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to great speeches, but then I turn on the TV and I’m in wonder at how good my candidate looks.

Jokes are many things. 'Funny' is only one of them.

But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.

You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Wer ein Theater füllen will, bedient sich der Dramaturgie. Um es zu leeren genügt Ideologie.

Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry.

I don't tolerate politics that come from anger. I want a politics derived from beauty... I don't admire politicians, but poets. (Rubem Alves, p. 189)

There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world’s smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.

For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.