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
  Comment to reporters in Florence, Sep. Recalled in This Vast External Realm (1973).

Twelve drawers full of political cancer.

-Anonymous
FBI agent referring to the files of J Edgar Hoover. Quoted in Newsweek, 23 Sep.

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
c.330  BC  Politics, bk.1, ch.2,1253b (translated by T  A Sinclair).

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
  'Preliminaries of Political Economy', collected in Economic Studies (1880).

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

-Barth, Karl
  Gegen den Strom (translated by E M Delacourt and S Godwin as'The Christian Community and the Civil Community' in  Against the Stream,1954).

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
  The Dean's December, ch.12.

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
Speech, Chile,18 Nov.

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

-Galbraith,John Kenneth
  The Affluent Society.

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)
  House of Commons,11 May.

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 Case for Conservatism, pt.1.

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

-Hamilton, Alexander
^8  The Federalist Papers.

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

-Heffer, Simon
Constitution of Germany.

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
  Letter to  John S  Wood,19 May, on being asked to give information for the McCarthy trials. Collected in US Congress Committee Hearing on Un- American  Activities (1952), pt.8.

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

-Douglas-Home, Baron
  Speech,  Jan.

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

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
Quoted in his NewYork Herald Tribune obituary, 24 Nov1963.

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
  Management and Machiavelli.

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
  The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

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

-Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher Charles Herbert
  In the NewYork Times, 31  Jul.

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
  Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, 20 Oct.

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
  Speech to the South  African Parliament, 3 Feb.