Top 88 Political Debate Quotes
#1. While the political debate over abortion will continue for a very long time, the federal government can and should be doing more to support programs and services that provide women with better options.
Tim Ryan
#2. The best tribute we can pay Madiba is to ensure that our political debate focuses on issues of how best we can ensure that each South African child, whatever the circumstances of their birth, inherits freedom they can use.
Helen Zille
#3. In reality, government subsidized railroad construction, maintained high protective tariffs and a tight money supply, used its power to crush strikes, and in other ways supported the nation's most powerful economic interests. But the laissez-faire myth still framed political debate. The
Steven J. Diner
#4. I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high
to permit the customary passions of political debate.
John F. Kennedy
#5. A few years ago the idea that extreme poverty was harmful was on the fringes of the economic and political debate. But having made the case we are now seeing an emerging consensus among business leaders, economic leaders, political leaders and even faith leaders.
Winnie Byanyima
#6. Political debate is political debate and that's fine. That's healthy.
Rachel Notley
#7. Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.
Aberjhani
#8. Theo finally did something purely for his own pleasure. Pulling his laptop toward him, he logged into his guilty secret - a local political debate forum - and looked for people who were wrong.
Con Riley
#9. The problem with the immigration debate, it's probably is the most poisoned and political debate of any issue, because you have this huge voting bloc that everybody says is yours
Greg Gutfeld
#10. At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.
Paddy Ashdown
#11. Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.
Noam Chomsky
#12. Climate change is a controversial subject, right? People will debate whether there is climate change ... that's a whole political debate that I don't want to get into. I want to talk about the frequency of extreme weather situations, which is not political.
Andrew Cuomo
#13. Political debate with liberals is basically impossible in America today because liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments.
Ann Coulter
#14. Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight.
Chip Conley
#15. I love hard political debate and I love beating somebody on a political point but what I'm more frustrated by is the politics where you play the man not the politics.
Johann Lamont
#16. This is supposed to be a lighthearted session of symbolic document destruction, not a political debate.
Veronica Roth
#17. The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.
Wendy Kaminer
#18. Too much of our political debate ... has become a race to the bottom. An exchange of insults and slanders more appropriate to reality television than a legislature.
Jeanne Shaheen
#19. As long as anger, paranoia and misinformation drive our political debate, there are unhinged souls among us who will feel justified in turning to violent remedies for imagined threats.
David Horsey
#20. Political debate is more interested in manipulating the truth, than finding the truth.
George Soros
#21. I think that political parties are fuelling this fear in order to create divisions. The more we bring up fear, the more we neglect real political issues. Political debate in France is crumbling since every single issue is brought to Islam now.
Tariq Ramadan
#22. Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men, who, until recently, couldn't get pregnant.
Kathleen Parker
#23. Political debate: when charlatans come together to discuss their principles.
Bauvard
#24. Intelligent women make the mistake of assuming that if they hold a higher degree, they can hold their own in a political debate, and they have a good understanding of mid-caps
Sherry Argov
#25. Ultimately if you're a journalist, one day you're writing about figure skating, one day a political debate. I loved that about reporting. I like throwing my energies into various corners of the world.
Jess Walter
#26. I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.
Mark McKinnon
#27. When a minister or a clergyman takes seriously unfashionable Christian doctrines which condemn sex outside marriage, homosexuality, abortion, and feminism, and injects his views into the political debate, he is immediately denounced as a 'reactionary.'
Benjamin Hart
#28. What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
#29. When you don't have accountability, there's no limit to the things that people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the filth that so often is part of the American political debate is that candidates have to stand by their ads.
Sheldon Whitehouse
#30. I am dead against trying to keep religious conservatives out of the political debate. The tactic of exclusion is self-defeating.
Harvey Cox
#31. The Office for Budget Responsibility correctly stay out of the political debate and do not assess the long-term costs and benefits of E.U. membership.
George Osborne
#33. The legal and political debate surrounding the just management of plurality will continue well into the future.
James Davison Hunter
#34. If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels - right-wing-biased mothers.
Thom Yorke
#35. Political debate is of no interest to me. What I want are practical solutions.
Carole Bouquet
#36. We need scientists and mathematicians explaining why they are excited about their subjects but also why they are important for solving social problems, informing political debate and for the economy.
Marcus Du Sautoy
#37. If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win?
Randall Terry
#38. In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness.
Dennis Prager
#39. Political civility is not about being polite to each other. It's about reclaiming the power of 'We the People' to come together, debate the common good and call American democracy back to its highest values amid our differences.
Parker Palmer
#40. Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
Mario Vargas-Llosa
#41. The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again.
Lee Iacocca
#42. When I look at the chaotic and volatile debate right now, both in Germany and around the world, my impression and concern is that the daily barrage of proposals and political statements is making markets and consumers even more nervous. Still, Brussels is pressing for a joint European approach.
Peer Steinbruck
#43. What may begin as a temporary method to circumvent reasoned discussion and debate for the sake of a prized political goal may very well end up permanently undermining the trust required for its existence.
Jason Stanley
#44. If this Nation really wants to create an effective border security policy, we need to have a debate that includes a discussion about actual solutions to our problems, which means taking all of the political grandstanding and baiting out of the equation.
Raul Grijalva
#45. Often times, political games prevent senators from even beginning to debate some of the most important issues.
Michael Bennet
#46. What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
Toni Morrison
#47. In another life, before taking the veil of journalistic purity, I practiced the black arts of a political operative, including 'debate prep.'
Jeff Greenfield
#48. I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.
Michael Sandel
#49. The reason he wouldn't be drawn into political or even theological debate was that he was indifferent to other people's opinions and felt no urge to engage with or oppose them.
Ian McEwan
#50. The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class.
Robert Waterman McChesney
#51. A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks.
Moses Finley
#52. I believe in the critical importance of participating in the political system - from voting to standing for election. It's both rewarding and necessary that men and women of good will and clear thinking engage in honest, open debate.
Michael Nutter
#53. The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later.
Criss Jami
#54. It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics.
Al Gore
#55. In many ways the culmination of [Judith Butler's] thinking to date, 'Parting Ways' will confirm Butler's place at the forefront of debate about one of the most anguished political crises of our times.
Jacqueline Rose
#56. I guess it feels to me that the political argument that has been lost in my lifetime is taxation. How do you engage in that debate when people don't trust politicians at all? It is almost impossible to start a conversation about taxation.
Johann Lamont
#57. I think that you have a situation where one political party, in specific, if you watched the Republican debate, it's all about terrorism.
Juan Williams
#58. Unfortunately, most gun control advocates are not really interested in rational debate, and their political games simply send Alice chasing white rabbits down holes.
Bob Barr
#59. I'd always liked the idea that drama acts at its best as a kind of arena for debate, not just about the thing itself, but also producing aesthetic, stylistic, political and moral discussions.
Jeremy Northam
#60. You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes ... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.
Jim Wallis
#61. Halfway through the televised debate I kick my boot into the screen. Even on mute I can't stand it. It feels good to smash the TV, though. I feel like I'm participating in the political system.
Joey Comeau
#62. We can't accommodate terrorism. When someone uses the slaughter of innocent people to advance a so-called political cause, at that point the political cause becomes immoral and unjust and they should be eliminated from any serious discussion, any serious debate.
Rudy Giuliani
#63. We are creating a political demolition derby, not a presidential debate. Those strange impulses in the American soul that have produced mud wrestling and The Gong Show seem to have claimed the national campaign.
Hugh Sidey
#64. I only debate with serious political youth formations. Not a group of the racist Helen Zille's garden boys.
Julius Malema
#65. It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.
Tom DeLay
#66. The key to holding a logical argument or debate is to allow oneself to understand the other person's argument no matter how divergent their views may seem.
Auliq Ice
#67. I am no longer 'trying to dig up evidence to prove' vaccines cause autism. There is already abundant evidence. This debate is not scientific but is political
David Ayoub
#68. For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed.
Anthony Daniels
#69. The issue of the environment as seen by Pope Francis is not a matter of purely scientific or, indeed, theological debate: it involves economic and political views on how the world's poor can be brought out of poverty while protecting the environment.
John Cornwell
#70. What is especially irritating about the whole abortion debate is the way the subject has been used as a political football by those on both the right and the left of the political aisle.
Chuck Baldwin
#71. Politics is - once in a while - a forum for serious debate about political philosophy.
P. J. O'Rourke
#72. The political climate during a campaign is not the best climate for reasonable debate.
Jose Mujica
#73. I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.
Christopher Hitchens
#74. Political success is often dependent on the ability to be heard above the din of controversy and debate and to set a course with one's own compass.
Madeleine M. Kunin
#75. During last night's debate, John Kerry and John Edwards were so friendly to each other some political experts think that they may end up running together. In fact Kerry and Edwards were so friendly, President Bush accused them of planning a gay marriage.
Conan O'Brien
#76. To debate political objectives, views, and goals is the most American thing conceivable.
Lou Reed
#77. One of the reasons a strategist never sits in a stadium and gets caught up in the crowds - and never sits watching a debate in person - is because the vast majority of American voters watch these political events on television.
Ed Rollins
#78. Political differences will always generate a healthy debate, but over time the dialogue has become more hateful and at times violent.
Mark Udall
#79. The model sanctuary was borne of a complex, political, societal debate. It was proposed to us from various bodies that we give models medicals once a year, and if they didn't pass that medical, there's a chance they'd legally lose their right to work.
Erin O'Connor
#80. I think church and state should remain entirely separate at all costs, and that the decision of religious marriage should be of each faith to debate and decide free of political influence.
Adam Rickitt
#81. 'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
Marvin Ammori
#82. Caricatures are an important part of our culture of debate. They should defuse political spats through humor and irony. It is about making a strong statement but softening it with a wink. So Danes do not get too upset about caricatures. None of us is interested in insulting Muslims.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
#83. Our country's political discourse and debate are enriched by discussions of the political implications of our faith traditions, whether they are taking place in our communities, at our dinner tables, or in our places of worship.
David Price
#84. So when you are faced with a decision on the euro, it is not surprising that many people are confused. They still try to squeeze the euro debate into the old language. But deep down it is a matter of deciding where one's future lies. It is a matter of political will and courage.
Romano Prodi
#85. On the issue of Iraq, it is my hope, and my challenge to my colleagues, that our debate will be based on what is best for the future of our nation and for Iraq, not what's best for a political party or presidential campaign.
Mitch McConnell
#86. A civilian-based diplomacy supports noncommercial, nonprofit, and publicly-subsidized media to counteract the corporate-controlled, for-profit, private media that dominate political discourse; and works to place media control, ownership, and lobbying at the center of public policy debate.
Nancy Snow
#87. Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.
Helen Suzman
#88. If the court is a political institution making important political decisions, then the public should debate the politics of Supreme Court decisions.
Marvin Ammori
