Politics Quotes – Insights and Reflections on Politics

"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind."

Thomas Sowell

"How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?"

Thomas Sowell

"The political class is supported by the many-thousand-voiced chorus of those who are committed to it by the already accomplished or still hoped-for awarding of offices and dignities. The proof of deficiencies is made difficult at the outset by the fact that there is an abundance of thought patterns (paradigms), formulas and theories that support the basic ideological thesis of the quasi-automatic functioning of the system. They seek to close the gap between norm and reality not by improving reality, but by interpreting the norm laxly or by obfuscating reality. Serving the cause of legitimizing power despite its democratic shortcomings"

Hans Herbert von Arnim

"The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate."

George Bernard Shaw

"It does not really matter whether democracy functions according to its original idea but rather that it is seen as functional by the population."

Rudolf Augstein

"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

Carl Sagan

"So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."

George Orwell

"Political and economic power in the United States is concentrated in the hands of a “ruling elite” that controls most of U.S.-based multinational corporations, major communication media, the most influential foundations, major private universities and most public utilities. Founded in 1921, the Council of Foreign Relations is the key link between the large corporations and the federal government. It has been called a “school for statesmen” and “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes. The creation of the United Nations was a Council project, as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank."

Steve Jacobson

"It’s about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign — it’s an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures."

Noam Chomsky

"In my own experience, I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political opinion in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any particular political party - democratic or totalitarian - through study and comparison of principles."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing."

Thomas Sowell

"The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class."

Walter Lippmann

"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

H. L. Mencken

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry."

Frank Zappa

"If we let politicians break the law in an emergency, politicians will create an emergency so they can break the law."

Robert Higgs

"Laws are - even and especially in modern democracy - rarely instruments that enforce right against wrong, but mostly political tools with which the politically weak are exploited, robbed, suppressed and instrumentalized in favor of the politically strong."

Roland Baader

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

George Orwell

"Give the people a toy to keep them busy long enough, give them 'political parties'! Then they will waste all their energy and wit on meaningless occupation with individuals and other trivialities. So they won't bother us anymore, and we can run our business at will. But to keep the toy from getting boring eventually and the population's discontent from boiling over, a ritual game with a cathartic function as a pressure valve must be inserted at regular intervals. We call it "parliamentary elections," which sounds important. Then there is peace for the next four years, especially since everyone believes they decided something themselves. The media? They play our game all by themselves—without realizing it. Occasionally we give them a morsel when we want to functionally neutralize a somewhat more alert, and thus unwelcome, person or group. Then they are satisfied, and so is the population; after all, they have something to gossip about. By splitting the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energy fighting for battles over issues of no importance."

Montagu Norman