political

Few things are as immutable as the addiction of political groups to the ideas by whichthey have once won office.

—Galbraith,John Kenneth

I have heard cynics who say he's a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes.

—Murdoch, (Keith) Rupert

Stevenson's convictions were sometimes too complex for the binary political arena to which he devoted his life.

—Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher Charles Herbert

Welcome to Britain's New Political Order. No passion† No Right. No Left.Just multi-hued blancmange.

—Mitchell, Austin

La presse exerce encore un immense pouvoir en Ame¤  rique. Elle fait circuler la vie politique dans toutes les portions de ce vaste territoire. C'est elle dont l'½il toujours ouvert met sans cesse a'   nu les secrets ressorts de la politique, et force les hommes publics a'   venir tour a' tour compara|"tre devant le tribunal de l'opinion. C'est elle qui rallie les inte¤  re"  ts autour de certaines doctrines et formule le symbole des partis; c'est par elle que ceux-ci se parlent sans se voir, s'entendent sans e"  tre mis en contact. The presshas enormous power in America.It isthe press that circulates political life through all parts of this vast territory. Its eye is always open, and making known the secret springs of politics, thus forcing public men to appear before the tribunal of public opinion. It is the press which rallies the interests of the community round certain principles and forms the creed of different parties. Through the press these parties can speak to each other without seeing each other, can listenwithout meeting.

—Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cle¤  rel de

   I've climbed my last political mountain.

—Wallace, George Corley

Margaret has been at her happiest confronting political dragons: I chose consensus.

—Major,John

Le divorce a ordinairement une grande utilite¤   politique;

—Bre'  de et de

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted on the tested foundations of political liberty.

—Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow

   It is a bad sign when Christians are frightened by 'political'sermonsöas if Christian preaching could be anything but political.

—Barth, Karl

The notion of a defence that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic in the President's vision.

—Schlesinger,James

It is exciting to have a real crisis onyour hands, when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment.

—Thatcher, Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness

I was a man lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis long before becoming a fully- fledged communist. Discovering Marxism was like finding a map in a forest.

—Castro (Ruz), Fidel

Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.

—Aristotle

To model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

—Hamilton, Alexander

My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)† The most improper job of any man is bossing other men.

—Tolkien,J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel)

The most striking of all the impressions that I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent.Whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

—Stockton

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago cameto the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.

—Hellman, Lillian Florence

   Assume a particular state of development in the productive facilities of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding organisation of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society. Assume a particular civil societyand you will get particular political conditions which are only the official expression of civil society.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

—Shaw, George Bernard

Das Seelische [ist] immer das Prim a« re und eigentlich Motivierende; die politischeAktion ist zweiterOrdnung, Reflex, Ausdruck, Instrument. The mental state is always the primaryand ultimately the motivating state.Political actionis ofsecond rank, reflex, expression, instrument.

—Mann,Thomas

Whenpolitical ammunitionrunslow, inevitably therusty artillery of abuse is wheeled into action.

—Stevenson, Adlai E(wing)

To state as clearly as may be what means lie readyto develop a property-owning democracy, to bring the industrial and economic status of the wage-earner abreast of his political and educational status, to make democracy stable and four-square.

—Skelton, (Archibald) Noel

If theTreasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury themat suitable depthsindisusedcoalmineswhich are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again†there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, thereal income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably becomea good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but as there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

—Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. The purpose shall be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

—Marshall, George C(atlett)

We had a two-track approach, one political and the other military, and the military was designed to move us along the political track.

—McNamara, Robert Strange

   A political animal can be defined as a body that will go on circulating a petition even with its heart cut out.

—Stegner,Wallace Earle

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

—Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)

Twelve drawers full of political cancer.

—Anonymous

We must not regard political consequences, however formidable they may be. If rebellion was the certain consequence, we are bound to say,'Justitia fiat, ruat coelum' (Let Justice be done, though the skies may fall).' See Ferdinand I 320:1.

—Mansfield,William Murray, 1st Earl

It is upon those who say that it is necessary to exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the working classes [from the vote] toshowcause, and Iventuretosay that every manwho is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.

—Gladstone,W(illiam) E(wart)

Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all itsthreatening evils, supplies atraining- school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all.

—Whitman,Walt(er)

Political economy thus does not recognize the unoccupied worker, the working man so far as he is outside this work relationship. Swindlers, thieves, beggars, the unemployed, the starving, poverty- stricken and criminal working man, are figures which do not exist for political economy, but only for other eyes; fordoctors, judges,grave-diggers,beadles,etc.Theyare ghostly figures outsidethe domain of political economy.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

Political economy tracesinanabstract way theeffects of the desire to be rich; and nations must nowadays abound in that passion if theyare to have much poweror respect in the world.

—Bagehot,Walter

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

—Heffer, Simon

   Idealism isthe noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

It is the necessary nature of a political in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change† The best carriage horses are those which can most steadily hold back against the coach as it trundles down the hill.

—Trollope, Anthony

Diplomatic problems used to be discussed by ambassadors† Foreign Ministers were called†somebody thought of the summit meetings† Wearenearing themoment whenpolitical meetingswill be held at a divine level.

—Acheson, Dean Gooderham

I suffer the anthropological malady diagnosed by Le¤  vi- Strauss inTristes tropiques: I find it much more difficult to suspend value judgments about the society in which I normally reside than I do abroad. It takes physical and cultural distance to gain moral detachment and political noncommitment. Relativism implies a solid measure of indifference.

—van den Berghe, Pierre L

  There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble, and the economic ones are incomprehensible.

—Douglas-Home, Baron

The great modern corporations are so similar to independent or semi-independent states of the past that they can only be fully understood in terms of political or constitutional history, and management can only be properly studied as a branch of government.

—Jay, SirAntony Rupert

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

—Pirsig, Robert M(aynard)

In a political point of view, nothing can possiblyafford greater stability to a popular Government than the education of the people.

—Whitbread, Samuel

   Every Communist must grasp the truth that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung

The businessman dealing with a large political question is reallya painfulsight.It doesseemtomethat businessmen, with a fewexceptions, are worse when theycometo deal with politics than men of any other class.

—Lodge, Henry Cabot

Conservatives donot believethatthepolitical struggle is the most important thing in life† The simplest of them prefer fox-hunting, the wisest religion.

—Hailsham, Quintin (McGarel) Hogg, 2nd Viscount

   The party must protect itself against the activities of small groups of inflexible political persuasion†having in common only their arrogant dogmatism† I have no wish to lead a party of political zombies.

—Wilson of Rievaulx, (James) Harold Wilson, Baron

Everybody's got to reclaim these thingsöpoetry, rock'n'roll, political activismöand it's got to be done over and over again. It's like eating: you can't say,'Oh, I ate yesterday'.You have to eat again.

—Smith, Patti

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because†it meansthat they have not a single political argument left.

—Thatcher, Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness

   A constant effort to keep a party together, without sacrificing either principle or the essentials of basic strategy, is the very stuff of political leadership. Macmillan was canonized for it.

—Wilson of Rievaulx, (James) Harold Wilson, Baron

Tearsmay be intellectual, but theycan never be political. They save no man from being shot, no child from being thrown alive into the furnace.

—Bellow, Saul

A third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner†a benign blanköa decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity.

—Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)

We are not a political party.We have not changed at all. On the contrary, the ANC is a Government in waiting.

—Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla