Political quotes

[tulc]

I thought it would be fun to have a thread of quotes, with the stipulation that we can't argue with a quote (ie "that's a stupid quote and here's why!") BUT! posting a quote that contradicts another quote wouldn't be bad!
So I'll start:

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then
their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.
-Christopher Dawson

 

[Sphinx777]

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."

Plato

 

[RhutRoh]

Well I just started a thread on this one, but it's too good not to share here:

“Every minute that I have here is going to be spent debunking the myth that this country’s in debt and we just can’t spend.” - Phil Hare (D, Illinois)

 

[tulc]

"I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess-and I hope we can
keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society
is the free society, the open society. Who gave us permission to live this
way? Nobody did. We did. And that's the way it should be-only more so. The
best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy."
-Edward Abbey

 

[tulc]

"The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of
religious factions.... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the
affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious
groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would
violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers
built this democratic republic."
-Senator Barry M. Goldwater

 

[Pommer]

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
Benjamin Disraeli

 

[sinner/SAVED]

I like the one in my sig which is also a religious quote:


"There is always something radically wrong with a situation in which some have too much and others have too little. This is always a sign that the society in which it occurs is hastening towards ruin." William Barclay

 

[EdwinWillers]

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." - Nancy Pelosi

 

[sinner/SAVED]

Another good one:

"The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity." Former President Jimmy Carter

 

[mcswan]

From my favorite curmudgeon:


"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."
H.L. Mencken

 

[Isambard]

"Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators then can build another world. Rubble, once achieved, makes further ruins' means irrelevant.
Away with our explosives, then!
Away with our destroyers! They have no place within our better world.
But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable.
Let's drink their health...
...then meet with them no more."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

 

[tulc]

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people
who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder
and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both.
But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never
has and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass

 

[EdwinWillers]

"Beware the man who thinks he can spend your money better than you can." Karl Jaeger

 

[tulc]

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know
more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or
intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people--and this
is true whether or not they are well-educated--is that intelligent people
can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory
situations--in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when
things seem overly straightforward.
-Neal Stephenson

 

[mcswan]

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
P.J. O'Rourke

 

[oldbetang]

"The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of
religious factions.... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the
affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious
groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would
violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers
built this democratic republic."
-Senator Barry M. Goldwater

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.
Barry Goldwater

 

[tulc]

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[EdwinWillers]

"I've now been in 57 states — I think one left to go." —Barack Obama

 

[tulc]

Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It's not fair that some men should be happier than others.
-Oscar Wilde

 

[mcswan]

“Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual … who … can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.”
Friedrich Nitzsche