Despite its enormous power and wealth, China’s ruling elite remains absolutely petrified that the free flow of information will undermine its political legitimacy, particularly among China’s younger generation.

Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let’s not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it’s not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we...

It’s an intolerable abuse of power to have employees who are supposed to be advancing the public interest actually working on political campaigns.

And it started out fun. We were chattering enthusiastically, flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. But as the evening wore on, and the numbers rolled in, it got quieter, and I found myself becoming intensely depressed. Why was I putting myself through this? The issues I’ve devoted my life to have become so marginalized...

There is nothing worse than certainty. Doubt makes us weak. That is why it’s so important. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to be powerful.

I’ve always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don’t sit down and think: ‘What political message can I sell?’ I love the creativity of it.

Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.

Power isn’t the big cars and bent slavesPower is your people in the streets as they drag you to prison.

Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

There’s a sameness to streetlife. On every world I’ve ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.

The state can’t give you freedom, and the state can’t take it away. You’reborn with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something youassume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree towhich you resist is the degree to which you are free…

Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks.

Clinton’s egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place.

I think that political marriages are subject to more strain than most precisely because of the nature of politics.

Political parties don’t work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.

In the beginning I thought, and still think, he did great good in giving support and encouragement to this movement. But I did not believe then, and have never believed since, that these ills can be settled by partisan political methods. They are moral and economic questions.

America: It’s a free country; that is if you can afford it.

You can’t believe that AIDS is a curse from God against Gays without accepting that Lyme Disease is a curse from the same God against Deer Hunters…

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making.

When it comes to engaging and influencing culture, too many Christians think too highly of political activism.

I think the Bush Administration had basically inherited a policy toward Iraq from the Reagan/Bush Administration that saw Iraq as a kind of fire wall against Iranian fundamentalism. And as it developed over the 1980s, it became a real political run-a-muck… even though the Iraqis were known to be harboring Palestinian terrorists.

There are ways to pursue political change. In a democracy, it’s through the ballot box. There are other ways, and many democracies have many different systems of democracy.

For if our bodies aren’t our own,And justice isn’t ours,And our love is just a sin,And voices by the peopleAre no longer for the people,What have we left to lose?

Given political history in Chile, it seemed to me that there was a critical task of consolidating a democracy and creating healthy civic-military and political-military relationships.

I felt it absolutely essential that we plant the U.N. flag in Rwanda and plant it in a place of significance to show all the political entities, all the signees of the agreement and the Rwandans… that the international community were here and we’re here to stay and we’re going to be doing our job.

With the United States in slow long-term decline, how will that affect the position of English? And where will all that leave monolingual Britain? Our political leaders like to boast about how global Britain is, but when it comes to languages, it is near the bottom of the global league, together with another island state,...

I wasn’t political in 1984, but I did have a friend in Winnemucca who was a ‘Southern Democrat.’ He was raised in Georgia, and when he moved to Nevada, he was still a Democrat, and he ran for office, and I knew that I couldn’t vote in the primary for him if I wasn’t a...

The World Cup is not just a great global sporting event, it is also inscribed with much deeper cultural and political importance.

Never underestimate the ability of political leaders to misread history on a monumental scale. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have both served to hasten western decline: they have both failed to achieve their objectives and in the process demonstrated an underlying western impotence.

Think about the precedents you are setting. It’s the Left that runs the world on reckless emotionalism. Don’t join.

I expect that in 40 years’ time I’ll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

Times have changed; so must the lenses through which we see the political future.

The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one

Be careful when building walls to protect yourself. Those same walls may cage you in.

Depending on your political orientation, the Dixie Chicks are either the great defenders of free speech or American traitors.

When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want to talk about inequality.

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.

far too many politicians suffer from foot and mouth disease; they always put a foot in their mouths

They plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up.

After reading Rob Lowe’s autobiography, I predict he will run for a very high-level political office. When he saw Arnold Schwarzenegger get sworn in, he told himself, “I can do that too.” Predicted by Jennifer Ritchie Payette Aug 25, 2014

I’m sure it is, I’m not for any kind of war, we’ve been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.

These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people’s feeling that they are not being represented.

The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.

I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.

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.

[I]f the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men;...

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there’ll be additional violence.