Post a political quote that you like...

[Wetzelbill]

Or a quote by a political or policy figure. -WB

I got this one courtesy of Paul Krugman's blog:

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking." -John Maynard Keynes

[DJ13]

1. "I know how hard it is to put food on your family"

-George W. Bush

[Wetzelbill]

2. always a classic

That Bush, it's fun to laugh at him now that he's almost out the door.

[truedelphi]

3. Excellent quote. Am loving it. For the moment, my contribution would be this one

About Academia - "Never have so many fought so much over so little."

I first heard it on a tv crime show. Don't know if it was the work of a literay great or some television writer, BUT DO APPRECIATE IT.

And since you cannot get too many places without surviving some smattering of academia, I think it is well worth noting.

[rawtribe]

4. Quotation on the Jefferson Memorial

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees"

E. Zapata

[OneBlueSky]

6. "Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage." . . . Ambrose Bierce . . . n/t

[saltpoint]

7. from Gore Vidal:

"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half."

--Gore Vidal

[EFerrari]

8. "You better get some sleep, Luis, you're starting to talk gibberish."

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov, Salvor Hardin in "Foundation"

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

10. Elections have consequences.

DiFi, I think, could be wrong there.

[AlCzervik]

11. From George Bernard Shaw-

"Some men see things as they are, and say 'Why?' -- I dream of things that never were, and say, 'Why not?'"

[Wetzelbill]

15. also famously reiterated by Bobby Kennedy

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. This seems to fit the bill, on several levels:

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. ~Nikita Khrushchev

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. “The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”

Marie Beyle

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795.

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." --John Quincy Adams

"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their actions only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." Mikhail Bakunin

[Bigmack]

14. "Go Fuck Yourself!" ... Dick Cheney....

(to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor)

Hey,

I don't have to agree with the guys politics, but it IS a great quote for these days and times.

A guy says "Obama is a socialist!" You don't have to try to reason with the asshole, just quote him one of the pet phrases of his butt-buddy Dick.... "Go Fuck Yourself!"

See... works like a charm.

[IDemo]

16. "The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter,

they are an entire banquet." - Mark Twain

[bigtree]

17. I'll put this first on my list, for the time being

Abraham Lincoln at Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858:

"By the frame of the government under which we live, these (same) people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals."

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage," Lincoln warned, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

[dkofos]

18. Ben Franklin

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.