You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you’ve seized that power, there’s no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.

Deception and privileged secrets are common facets of politics.

Corporate greed controls political will.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.

Here we introduce the nation’s first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history’s first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union’s man was one Rutherford B. Hates, an obscure Ohio politician described by a contemporary journalist as “a third rate nonentity.” But the firm and its...

civic demobilization,” conditioning an electorate to being aroused for a brief spell, controlling its attention span, and then encouraging distraction or apathy. The intense pace of work and the extended working day, combined with job insecurity, is a formula for political demobilization, for privatizing the citizenry. It works indirectly. Citizens are encouraged to distrust their...

Information wants to be free.” (No. Information, like most of us, wants a home in the Hamptons.)” – Richard Cohen, Washington Post (10/22/2013)

Političari uvek lažu kao deca, jer lažu rulju dečije male sposobnosti prosuđivanja.

Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.

That was one of the troubles with the Istiqlal, with all politics: you talked about people as though they were not really people, as though they were only things, numbers, animals, perhaps, but not really people.

How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

Kami antarsaudara terpaksa saling bunuh hanya karena kekuasaan. Itulah yang nyaris terjadi di setiap negara. Demokrasi yang sekarang menggejala, apakah benar akan mengantarkan manusia pada kesadaran untuk berhenti saling membunuh? Tidak juga. Di negeri seberang, di mana kudengar demokrasi diberikan begitu leluasa, malah kejahatan, pembunuhan, pemerkosaan terhadap perempuan, saling fitnah, saling rebut kekuasaan hampir terjadi...

can’t even face his marriage problems full on.

So no, I’m not too big on religion…and not very fond of politics or economics either…And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?

I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.

It’s like a drug, the feeling you could make a difference….

The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

Knowing true colors of politicians was tough when everything was in black-n-white.

If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this...

All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Anyone who chooses a religion is also choosing a collective way for worshipping and sharing the mysteries. Nevertheless, that person is the only one responsible for his or her actions along the way and has no right to shift responsibility for any...

There is nothing more tedious about interviewing politicians. It would have been better if I’d been sent to cover some crime or another. Murderers are much more real.

Let us make sure that the supreme fact of the 20th century is that they tread the same path.

El olvido de que la democracia es una deliberación sobre finalidades, sobre las cuales a la ciencia, ni siquiera la economía, no les corresponde dirimir, es una amnesia muy grave pues significa olvidar el fundamento de la democracia.

I know I have a strong India connect. Is it Subhash Chandra Bose or my father who left my Austrian mother when I was one? – Catherine Khan

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

What manner of men had lived in those days…who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and...

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?

Humans, werewolves, or, apparently, vampire, it doesn’t matter; get more than three of them together and the jockeying for power begins.

There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!

The regime’s policies, whether intentionally or unintentionally, had engendered a sharp divide between Muslims and Christians, in spite of the fact that generations of Muslims and Coptic Christians had lived together peacefully in the past. The regime was good at utilizing this divide to create a perception that without Mubarak in power, Egyptians would break...

To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one’s self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand — such is the example which nations need and the...

That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

The pillars of classical liberalism call for flat taxes, with revenues put to limited uses; strong property rights; and free markets.

Our so-called leaders speakWith words they try to jail youThe subjugate the meekBut it’s the rhetoric of failure

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant pastSecurity in human systems we’re told will always always lastEmotions are the sail and blind faith is the mastWithout the breath of real freedom we’re getting nowhere fast.”(History Will Teach Us Nothing)

Hyperbole is the common currency of political debate.

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?

Jesus’ incarnation and ministry thus present us with the final critique of strategic religion; on the cross, where we see God almost deliberately ‘lose’ – as if duped into being strung up by a scheming, fearful group of clerics – we see the end of power games. God will not play. I sincerely believe that...

A sheep that walks amongst wolves is called dinner – rjs

Behind every wolf in sheep’s clothing is a trail of dead sheep – rjs

The power of a corrupt government is located in the ignorance and indifference of its people – rjs

Empire always overreaches itself and thus dies by its own hand victim of its own ambitions

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

The worst kind of tyrant is one that is righteously wrong