Top 100 Quotes About Political Philosophy
#1. Regaring Politics: You've got your cats on one side and your dogs on the other; someone has to walk the fence and feed the animals. - Kinky Friedman
Ray Palla
#2. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Ronald Reagan
#3. In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously.
Milan Kundera
#4. Everything that happens in philosophy has, in the last instance, not only political consequences in theory, but also political consequences in politics: in the political class struggle.
Louis Althusser
#5. ...empires were formed by wars of conquest, but ruled by deception."
The Professor, Hope's great-uncle and the builder of the time-machine.
Eve Human
#6. Politicians are not afraid of their mistakes, they are afraid their mistakes will not succeed
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#7. If in other respects the old condition of things be continued, and there be no discordance in their customs, men live peaceably with one another ...
Niccolo Machiavelli
#8. Revolution was never sparked by political philosophy. It has ever been the price of bread that shakes the pillars of the world. Yet they lock up the thinkers and leave the bakers free.
Rod Duncan
#9. The responsibility of political philosophy that tries to engage with practice is to be clear, or at least accessible.
Michael Sandel
#10. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.
G.K. Chesterton
#11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
#12. If terrorism has no religion then intolerance has no country either
Subhasis Das
#13. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,
Arlen Specter
#14. There is only one hope for mankind - and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it - and that is the Labour Party.
Aneurin Bevan
#15. The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home
James Madison
#17. When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest.
Auliq Ice
#18. My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility
Camille Paglia
#19. Every politician brings in a wide range of context, promises and characters to bring his mission of you to listen to his words and vote for him and later he won't listen to you at any range.
Auliq Ice
#20. We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
Ronald Reagan
#21. To change a political system, the majority of the thinking citizens must unite, speak with one voice and stand firm like one leg.
Ahmed Padia Binkatabana
#23. Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers ...
William O. Douglas
#24. A politician lost an argument; he went on a rampage with his fists pointed towards the sky - a move which amounts to a search for a new self.
Duop Chak Wuol
#25. The left-right political dichotomy serves liberalism by not challenging it. Democracy sustains the status quo by offering the illusion of choice with no choice. Genuine opposition can only emerge if there is an alternative story with which to counter the current mythos.
John Dunn
#26. Anarchism as a political philosophy seeks to dissolve all forms of authority and power, and if possible, wishes their complete abolition.
Peter Marshall
#27. I didn't understand how you could be an actor if you didn't also study philosophy and study political science, astronomy. And also just go out and live life and have experiences.
Brit Marling
#28. The average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
H.L. Mencken
#29. Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to 'get off my property.' News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
John Scalzi
#32. You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education.
Bob Black
#33. Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.
Emma Goldman
#34. An animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the end of a thousand years, is what it was in the first of those thousand years. Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#35. A stable and prosperous DRC is the victory of the World. Congo is a deciding factor for Africa's development whether we like it or not.
Ahmed Padia Binkatabana
#36. The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.
Malcolm X
#37. Any ideology that places more emphasis on winning converts than on sound philosophy is sadly misguided. By this reasoning, all of our political parties and most of our religions are sadly misguided.
Michel Templet
#39. The neoconservative pseudo-conservatives speak like Tocqueville but act like Robespierre.
Ilana Mercer
#41. A mother was thinking of how to keep her naughty child in line she tried using the boogey man it didn't work ... she thought and thought then said "the Politician is going to get you" and he was never naughty again
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#42. Politics is - once in a while - a forum for serious debate about political philosophy.
P. J. O'Rourke
#43. It just doesn't make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies "out there" with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is "in here" with us - embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.
Jim Wallis
#45. Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
Ayn Rand
#46. I sometimes call my new system 'Italian pagan Catholicism,' but it could more accurately be called 'pragmatic liberalism,' with roots in Enlightenment political philosophy. It is a synthesis of the enduring dual elements in our culture, pagan and Judeo-Christian, Romantic and Classic.
Camille Paglia
#47. The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?
Gilles Deleuze
#48. Not every smile is genuine some are just the bared fangs of wolves about to eat you - rjs
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#49. No Republican presidential candidate is a viable option for pro-choice voters of any political philosophy - Democrat, Republican or otherwise.
Christine Pelosi
#50. I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
#51. The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
Jane Addams
#53. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.
Steve Wynn
#54. If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them
Karl Marx
#55. The difference between Nazism and Communism is just the size of the leader's moustache.
Adriano Bulla
#56. The distinction between nature and convention is fundamental for classical political philosophy and even for most of modern political philosophy, as can be seen most simply from the distinction between natural right and positive right.
Leo Strauss
#57. Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.
Carl Schmitt
#58. It's always interesting to see what judges do when their legal philosophy conflicts with their political views.
Jeffrey Toobin
#59. 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
#62. But I had little knowledge of Marxism, and in political discussions with my communist friends I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of their philosophy. I decided to remedy this.
Nelson Mandela
#63. The Reservoir plan is an engineering mechanism applied to the field of economics, and in its essence it has nothing to do with democracy or any other political philosophy.
Benjamin Graham
#64. Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.
Robert A. Heinlein
#65. I believe that white frame house is worthy of more than a nod of nostalgia, because the values President Clinton learned there and in Hope formed the core of his political philosophy.
Mack McLarty
#67. People of Haiti, I am the heir to the political philosophy, the doctrine and the revolution which my late father incarnated as president-for-life [and] I have decided to continue his work with the same fierce energy and the same intransigence.
Jean-Claude Duvalier
#69. Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal - or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.
L. Neil Smith
#70. It was a mistake to speak one's mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#71. We must endure the ignorant to protect the liberty of the majority.
James D. Best
#72. Benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual
Adolf Hitler
#73. All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#74. While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.
Orson Scott Card
#75. Libertarianism is supposed to be all about principles, but what it's really about is political expedience. It's basically a corporate front, masked as a philosophy.
Jane Mayer
#76. My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.
Andrej Pejic
#77. I still lack a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I'll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
Anton Chekhov
#78. Government does not create wealth; it redistributes it. Whatever it gives you it must first take from someone else.
Robert W. McGee
#79. Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.
Ken Burns
#80. There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Plato
#81. The world needs heroes. Be a hero and build your part of the world.
Abhijit Naskar
#82. I dream of a world where Science shapes the structure of a society, rather than politics.
Abhijit Naskar
#83. Judicial excellence means that a Supreme Court justice must have a sense of the values from which our core of our political- economic system goes. In other words, we should not approve any nominee whose extreme judicial philosophy would undermine rights and liberties relied upon by all Americans.
Herb Kohl
#85. At Harvard College, I discovered political philosophy as a way of life.
Tom Cotton
#86. Politics is the art of promising heaven and delivering purgatory, and claiming hero status for saving your country from hell.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#87. Force is a physical power; I do not see how its effects could produce morality. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; it is at best an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a moral duty?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#88. It is hard to hear the truth from people who get paid to distort it.
Sean S. Kamali
#89. Oppressors specialise in rasing wolves from amonst the sheep then together with the wolves devour the sheep
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#91. It was no accident that the beau ideal of his (John Adams') political philosophy was balance, since he projected onto the world the conflicting passions he felt inside himself and regarded government as the balancing mechanism that prevented those factions and furies from spending out of control.
Joseph J. Ellis
#92. LORD BOLINGBROKE, the eighteenth-century political philosopher, said that "history is philosophy teaching by examples." Thucydides is reported to have said much the same thing two thousand years earlier. Jefferson
David McCullough
#93. Can anyone name a president who really had the citizens in mind during the majority of his decisions in office? None of them did, and the current ones don't either. It's all about power, keeping power, and dishing out power to those who throw the most money at them.
Charlie Donlea
#94. Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.
Grover Cleveland
#95. I guess, then, that is what I find troublesome about this plan. It is too logical, too clever, too carefully thought out, and, most important of all, it has to be carried out in secret, which means that if the American public knew about it, they would be appalled and would not be supportive of it.
J.W. Amran
#96. Democracy and tyranny are not distant relatives. They're bedfellows."
-General John James
Commandant, USMC
December 11th, 2032
L. Douglas Hogan
#97. I mean, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you? Didn't we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?
Cory Doctorow
