About Politics

“You wouldn’t let your grandparents pick your playlist. Why would you let them pick your representative who’s going to determine your future?” – Barack Obama

“A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.” – Albert Camus

Why does the conservative solution to economic problems always boil down to the reintroduction of slavery?

In May 1940, the English novelist George Orwell reviewed the autobiography of Havelock Ellis ;- “As the surviving writers of the nineteenth century drop away, one has the feeling that they are dying just in time. Ten years more, even five years, and they might recoil in horror from the world they have helped to create. When Havelock Ellis was born, the Origin of Species was a brand-new scandal; when he died, the Germans were in Prague. In between there lay eighty years of ‘progress’ and ‘enlightenment,’ of patient, courageous effort by men like Ellis himself to chip away at the bases of Christian civilisation. It had to be done, but the result was totally different from what had been intended.”

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. ~ A Phillip Randolph

“Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people. And elected another?”. ~ Bertolt Brecht.

When something doesn’t make sense it’s usually because the truth is missing.

That these people have the right to vote and to procreate is frightening to me.”

“General Motors, General Mills, General Foods, general ignorance, general apathy, and general cussedness elect presidents and Congressmen and maintain them in power.”
― Herbert M. Shelton

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting–or even demanding–their own enslavement.”
― Larken Rose

“Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.”
― Naomi Klein

It’s not the voting that’s democracy. It’s the counting.

Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender!

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” ― Winston S. Churchill

So you want to be a career soldier? Good for you. But remember that the longer you stay in uniform, the less you will really understand about the country you protect. Democracy is the antithesis of the military life; it’s chaotic, dishonest, disorganized, and at the same time glorious, exhilarating and free — which you are not.
After a while, if you stay in, you’ll be tempted to say, “Look, you civilians, we’ve got a better way. We’re better organized. We’re patriotic, and we know what it is to sacrifice. Be like us.” And you’ll be dead wrong, son. If you’re a career soldier, you may defend democracy, but you won’t understand it or be part of it. What’s more, you’ll always be a stranger to your own society. That’s the sacrifice you’ll be making.
~ an un-named Infantry Colonel speaking to a new intake in the 1950’s.

I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. ~ Karl Marx

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. ~ Karl Marx

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. ~ Karl Marx

There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror. ~ Karl Marx

It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way. ~ Karl Marx

Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included). ~ Karl Marx

Political Economy regards the proletarian … like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. ~ Karl Marx

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. ~ Karl Marx

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. ~ Karl Marx

Ideas do not exist separately from language. ~ Karl Marx

The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. ~ Karl Marx

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. ~ Karl Marx

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it. ”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Every society is three meals away from chaos”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“Sometimes – history needs a push.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.’ ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Rupert Murdoch once had a great-uncle who was a Professor of English and an essayist who brought education to the general population. Let us now discuss how Rupert was radicalised into the religion of greed.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious ~ Oscar Wilde

PRIVATISATION : the process of turning what was all of ours – into theirs. ~ Luke Weyland

The government spends more and more of our tax money financing “faith-based organizations.” Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy. ~ RAW

Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois. (Concealing true intentions is the art of kings.) ~ Richelieu

If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.

Promise great things; promise, and do not pay ~ Danté

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” ~ George Orwell, 1984

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”  ~ George Orwell, 1984

“It’s hard to change horseman in mid-apocalypse” ~ Mike Fitzsimon

“The left of politics is concerned with people who cannot help themselves. The right is concerned with those who can”

Some people deserve to get eggs thrown at them. Brick shaped eggs… Made of bricks.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. ~ N Machiavelli

A Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy – Benjamin Disraeli

“The earth has everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

The advance of civilisation is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy. ~ Isaac Azimov

“By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.” ~ Confucius

Those Tory young people look odd. Do they not believe in chins? Or testicles…

The desire for leadership is a personality disorder which, in a truly civilized country, would disqualify the sufferer from any elected position!

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. ~George Orwell

The happiness of society is the end of Government ~ John Adams

“Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used–not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.”  ― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now. ~ RAS

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles. ~ RAS

Conspiracy is just another name for coalition. ~ RAS

Le Chatelier’s principle; If a chemical system at equilibrium experiences a change in concentration, temperature, volume, or partial pressure, then the equilibrium shifts to counteract the imposed change and a new equilibrium is established. Summarised; Any change in status quo prompts an opposing reaction in the responding system. This applies in Politics as well!

Why did Karl Marx’s toilet play music when it flushed? Because of the violins inherent in the cistern.

c ~ Steve Drummond

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself. Mark Twain

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John Stuart Mill

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy;… moral justification for selfishness. Galbraith

Thinking is a left wing conspiracy.

Modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community” OSCAR WILDE

ONLY A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY WILL KEEP MARS FROM OVERTAKING THE EARTH AS THE THIRD PLANET FROM THE SUN. You have been warned.

A fantatic is someone who redoubles his effort when he’s forgotten his aim.
Santayana

A ruler who has to resort to force has already failed as a ruler. Your job is to govern, not to kill.
K’ung-fu-tzu

America seems to be an oligarchy pretending to be a republic and calling itself a democracy.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
Tony Benn

“Any American who is prepared to run for President should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”
Gore Vidal.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H. L. Mencken

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
~Albert Camus

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom. ~ F A Hayek

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
~Albert Einstein

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.
~Albert J. Nock

The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us…than the need for any external expansion of our power.
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
~Alexander Hamilton
‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. – F A Hayek

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
~Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations.
~Anthony Gregory

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
~Barbara Ehrenreich

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.
~Butler Shaffer

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
~Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
~Charles-Louis De Secondat

We…are not really free if we can’t control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.
~Charley Reese

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
~Clarence Darrow

As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn’t true.
~Craig Murray

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised “for the good of its victims” may be the most oppressive.
~C. S. Lewis

Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.
~C.S. Lewis

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.
~Daniel O’Connell

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny…
~David Hume

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
~Davy Crockett

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that’s just a fact.
~Donald Rumsfeld

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
~Dorothy Thompson

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
~Edward R. Murrow

My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.
~Ella Baker

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
~FA Hayek

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.
~Francis John McConnell

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.
~Francis John McConnell

The State acquires power… and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.
~Frank Chodorov

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
~Frederick Douglass

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.
~Friedrich Hebbel,

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
~George Orwell

“As God once said, and I think rightly…….”
Margaret Thatcher.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy. Christopher Dawson

Be Afraid, Because Paranoia Is Patriotic

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Mahatma Gandhi

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

I can’t help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from ’em by calling ’em the masses and then you accuse ’em of not having any faces.
JB Priestley

I don’t approve of political jokes … I’ve seen too many of them get elected.

I hope if dogs ever take over the world and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
W. C. Fields

If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour,
imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started.

“In a way, we’re a kind of Peace Corps.” – Maj. A. Lincoln German, Training Director of the Green Beret Special Warfare School, Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.

Just remember this the next time some politician says that terrorists are threatening our freedoms: not a single freedom has been taken away from us by terrorists – they have been taken away by our elected officials.

“Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future… We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.”
Eric Hoffer

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Emma Murnane

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson

“Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason”.

Remember 9/11 because when you waste time worrying about crooked CEO’s the terrorists win!

“The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” – H. L. Mencken

“there ought to be limits to freedom.”
GW BUSH 05/21/1999

“Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”
Ambrose Bierce

“War never determines who is right; War determines who is left.”
-Confucius (Why is this attribution incorrect?)

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi

“When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.”

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
Albert Einstein

You will find that the State is the kind of ORGANIZATION which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too. – John Kenneth Galbraith