Political Principle Quotes

#1. The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism.

Rose Wilder Lane

#2. It is a universal and fundamental political principle that the power to protect can safely be confided only to those interested in protecting, or their responsible agents - a maxim not less true in private than in public affairs.

John C. Calhoun

#3. The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula.

Herbert Croly

#4. Circumstances give in reality to every political principle, its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

David Trimble

#5. The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

Jon Meacham

#6. My basic political principle: If something, whether right- or left-wing, is driven by love and solidarity, it is right; if it is driven by hate and fear it is wrong. Simple as that.

Neel Burton

#7. (Vice President) Garner has taken his personal smallness, his lack of generosity, and forged it into a political principle. He has no imagination, no convictions, and he substitutes political cynicism for social understanding.

Hamilton Basso

#8. It is difficult to attack me directly on religion because I never speak of it. Formally I am a strict observer of decorum and in public affairs it is my principle to uphold religion.

Etienne Francois, Duc De Choiseul

#9. Interest yourself in public affairs as a duty of citizenship, but do not surrender your faith to those who discredit and debase politics by scoffing at sentiment and principle, and whose political activity consists in attempts to gain popular support by cunning devices and shrewd manipulation.

Grover Cleveland

#10. There is always some basic principle that will ultimately get the Republican party together. If my observations are worth anything, that basic principle is the cohesive power of public plunder.

Anselm J. McLaurin

#11. We must use a judicial, rather than a political, standard to evaluate [a nominee's] fitness for the Supreme Court. That standard must be based on the fundamental principle that judges interpret and apply but do not make law.

Orrin Hatch

#12. Former President Bill Clinton, who is widely regarded as a political mastermind, may have sounded like a traditional liberal at the beginning of his term in office. But what ultimately defined his presidency was his amazing pliability on matters of principle.

Thomas Frank

#13. I apprehend ... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.

Thomas Jefferson

#14. If you take Darwinian theory, make a 'scientific' principle out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany.

Bruce Lipton

#15. Use political positions as a platform to introduce legislation based on kingdom principle

Sunday Adelaja

#16. He who attempts to draw any conclusion whatever as to the nation's wealth or poverty from the mere fact of a favorable or unfavorable Balance of Trade, has not grasped the first fundamental principle of Political Economy.

Ernst Engel

#17. The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

Janet Yellen

#18. No man is fit to be a Senator ... unless he is willing to surrender his political life for great principle.

Henry F. Ashurst

#19. If we truly understand, remember, and love the people of Indonesia, let us accept this principle of social justice, that is, not only political equality, but we must create equality in the economic field, too, which means the best possible well-being.

Sukarno

#20. It is all too easy for a society to measure itself against some abstract philosophical principle or political slogan. But in the end, there must remain the question: What kind of life is one society providing to the people that live in it?

Hubert H. Humphrey

#21. Of course I believe in free enterprise but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.

Harry S. Truman

#22. The idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.

Alexander Hamilton

#23. When principles are so absurd and so destructive of human society, it may safely be averred, that the more sincere and the more disinterested they are, they only become the more ridiculous and the more odious.

David Hume

#24. The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Raymond Geuss

#25. Unfortunately, the true force which propels our endless political disputes, our constant struggles for political advantage, is often not our burning concern for democracy, it is often of our dedication to the principle of the rule of law.

Olusegun Obasanjo

#26. The pejorative term "political correctness" was adapted to express disapproval of the enlargement of etiquette to cover all people, in spite of this being a principle to which all Americans claim to subscribe

Judith Martin

#27. Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

Honore De Balzac

#28. Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.

Thomas Paine

#29. 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

#30. With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato.

Karl Popper

#31. A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.

A.P. Herbert

#32. Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

Benjamin Disraeli

#33. [M]onarchy was, or ought to be, not so much absolute as mitigated by the principle of ius politicum, supporting a mixed polity partaking of elements both royal and political, which is to say, popular and representative.

Patrick Collinson

#34. Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

Nelson Mandela

#35. The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one's fingers.

Arthur Koestler

#36. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson

#37. From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty

Victor Hugo

#38. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Thomas Jefferson

#39. If ... a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should ... gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare.

William Wilberforce

#40. I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.

Richard Cobden

#41. The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.

Erich Fromm

#42. Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

Wendell Phillips

#43. The traits in career politicians the public detests most are produced when ego triumphs over principle.

Tom Coburn

#44. Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

Simon Heffer

#45. Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes ... Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it.

Harry Browne

#46. It is imperative that good people, men and women of principle, be involved in the political process; otherwise we abdicate power to those whose designs are almost entirely selfish.

Gordon B. Hinckley

#47. Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson