Quotes and text excerpts about "politics"

“ Politics in America is a profession, a trade, a science, a perfect system by which one or two men run or control millions. Politics means the attainment of political power and influence, which mean office. Some men are in politics for the love of power, some for spoils ("graft" they call it in slang) , and some for the high offices. In America there are two large parties, the Republican and the Democratic. Then there are the Labor, Prohibition (non-drinking) , and various other parties, which, in the language of politics, "cut no ice." The real issues of a party are often lost sight of. ”

“ For the science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action, and a power that goes to the making of the future. ”

“ Politics is very largely, and one might almost say normally, a conflict of material interests; ideas dissociated from action are not its sphere; the way in which policies are found immediately to affect human life is their political significance. ”

“ Politics, the action of men in the mass, are akin to the operation of natural forces; and, as such, they are neither moral nor immoral; they are simply non-moral. Political movements are often as resistless as the tides of the ocean; they carry to fortune, and they bear to ruin, the just and the unjust with heedless impartiality. ”

“ Politics are morals, all the world over; that is, politics universally implicate the duty and happiness of man. Every branch of morals is, and ought to be considered, a universal concern. Under despotic governments, there is a pretension, more [Pg 5] or less sincere, on the part of the rulers, to moral regards; but from these the bulk of the people are, by common consent, cut off. ”

“ It is true, politics may bring into the field of competition, timid and shrinking intellect; but they do not impart to it a masculine boldness and nobleness. They train it to deeds of cunning and hypocrisy. We have reference now to the general politics of the age. Party strifes, the natural result of excess in politics, keep the mind in an unhealthy state: at one time raising it to the highest pitch of excitement; at another, causing the most extreme depression. That calm serenity, which moderates and chastens its powers, passions and emotions, is a stranger in a political contest. ”

“ Now politics simply means public affairs—yours and mine, everybody's—and to say that politics are too corrupt for women is a weak and foolish statement for any man to make. Any man who is actively engaged in politics, and declares that politics are too corrupt for women, admits one of two things, either that he is a party to this corruption, or that he is unable to prevent it—and in either case something should be done. Politics are not inherently vicious. ”

“ MUST LEARN POLITICS BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY It is the activity in the political function that both awakens interest and inspires intelligence. Why should a woman, brought up in the old, restricted, domestic tradition, forthwith become a vital, vigorous, political force merely because the ballot is put into her hands? ”

“ What we call politics is in reality government, and home is the basis of all good government, and government to serve its legitimate aim in a democracy must reflect the sentiments of all the members of the society that created it, women as well as men, and the higher the aspirations of society the higher the purposes of government. ”

“ We are aware that many will look with surprise, and perhaps suspicion, too, at the word "politics" . . . [in] the subjects to be discussed in the Spectator, from the fact, that heretofore, the privileges of the paper have been closed against politics entirely. We understand the 8th article of the constitution of the Oregon Printing Association . . . to exclude ex parte politics only. . . . Politics, as we understand the term, means the science of government, and not the effervescence of fermenting partyism, or the noisy froth of spouting demogogues. ”

“ Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. ”

“ Politics is a great educative force: it teaches history, geography, and the art of debate, and is not without relation to Shakespeare and the musical glasses. The flies on the wheel are not moving the wheel, but they are travelling and seeing the world, whereas they might otherwise be buzzing around the dust-bin. Politics sets the humblest at the centre of great cross-roads of history: it promotes clubs and all manner of fellowship, and enables the poorest—on polling-day at least—to know himself the equal of the greatest. ”

“ Politics is the snare and delusion of white men as well as black. Politics tickles the skin of the social order; but the disease lies deep in the internal organs. Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white—you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.
No man ever came into the world with so grand an opportunity as the American negro. ”

“ There is no such thing here as a science of politics, because it is not to any one’s interest to make politics the study of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds general acceptance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over again the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our prosperity suffers from, experiments endlessly repeated.
Every patriot believes his country better than any other country. ”

“ Morals, religions, politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own approval first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of his life--even if he must repent of a self-approved act the moment after its commission, in order to get his self-approval again: but, speaking in general terms, a man’s self-approval in the large concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter. ”

“ I will admit that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that politics needs no more excitement; but sometimes, you know, things are homœopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it is likely that it would neutralize the excitement that is already there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter) . But, not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be educated. Woman is yet to experience the reactionary influence of being a public legislator and thinker. ”

“ Men who con trol our politics seem to have little confidence in man, little in truth, little in justice, and the eternal right. Therefore, while it is never out of season to do something for the tariff, for the moneyed interests of men, they think it is never in time to do much for the great work of elevating mankind itself. They have no confidence in the people, and take little pains to make the people worthy of confidence. So any change which gives a more liberal government to a people, which gives freedom to the slave, they look on with distrust, if not alarm. ”

“ The distinction that I am trying to draw is a difficult one and cannot be understood without a short digression about the nature of the study of politics. Politics is the study or activity of government, of the management of the public or common affairs of men. We need ‘politicians’, men who will devote themselves to meeting the demand for the management of our common affairs—we need them not because we are Englishmen, Irishmen, or Americans, but because we are human beings living together in society, and because our co-operative relations and activities require to be guided and controlled. ”

“ Publicity is one of the purifying elements of politics. The best thing that you can do with anything that is crooked is to lift it up where people can see that it is crooked, and then it will either straighten itself out or disappear. Nothing checks all the bad practices of politics like public exposure. You can't be crooked in the light. I don't know whether it has ever been tried or not; but I venture to say, purely from observation, that it can't be done.
And so the people of the United States have made up their minds to do a healthy thing for both politics and big business. ”

“ There is no one who stands for his own ideas himself, by himself, a man. If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in147 you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic party or the Republican party (for at present machine and party are one) , or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era,—then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem, and you must be educated and drawn forward towards real life. ”

“ Let no one aspire to a leading part in politics, unless he possess genuine and earnest convictions: let no one who has not such firm principles in his heart, give utterance to energetic professions with his lips: let no one who has not a great soul set up for being a great man. ”

“ There is really a vast amount of corruption and hypocrisy in our election politics; about the most honest thing in the whole mess is the canvassing. A man has not got a right to “nurse” a constituency with aggressive charities, to buy it with great presents of parks and libraries, to open vague vistas of future benevolence; all this, which goes on unrebuked, is bribery and nothing else. But a man has got the right to go to another free man and ask him with civility whether he will vote for him. ”

“ Philosophers are ridiculous when they take to politics, and I dare say that politicians are equally ridiculous when they take to philosophy: “Every man,” as Euripides says, “is fondest of that in which he is best.” ”

“ What is a politician? He is a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education a mediocrity; he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowds, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him he would die of starvation. He is precisely the thing of which democracy has need. He will never be led away by his education to develop ideas of his own; and, having no ideas of his own, he will not allow them to enter into conflict with his prejudices. ”

“ It is impossible to satirise a man without having a full account of his virtues. It is too much the custom in politics to describe a political opponent as utterly inhumane, as utterly careless of his country, as utterly cynical, which no man ever was since the beginning of the world. ”

“ Language is the instrument through which political practical experience takes place. To reconstitute past succeeding political experiences therefore means to reconstitute their language (s) . The task is overwhelming because politics is mingled with every aspect of human life: work, property, family, sex, religion, education, ethics, and art. It is present even in the interrelations of these aspects because politics is also self-reflective. That is, the identity of one entity is related to the identity of others in relation to which self-identification takes place. ”

“ The man who thinks the polls disagreeable and uninteresting places has no business taking up a pen to write about government. The man who despises the sheriff because he is coarse and uncouth, and who studies the sheriff’s57 functions only from the drawing-room or the library, will realize the life of government no better than he realizes the vanity of ‘good form.’
If politics were to be studied as a great department of human conduct, not to be understood by a scholar who is not also a man of the world, its literature might be made as imperishable as that of the imagination. ”

“ Power without right is not government. Governments have the right to use force at need, but might does not make right, and not every power wielding the physical force of a nation is to be regarded as its rightful government. Whatever resort to physical force it may be obliged to make, either in defence of its authority or of the rights of the nation, the government itself lies in the moral order, and politics is simply a branch of ethics—that branch which treats of the rights and duties of men in their public relations, as distinguished from their rights and duties in their private relations. ”

“ A man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. ”

“ The power of intellectual education as an element in life is always overvalued; and, within its sphere, which is less than is represented, it is subject to error, prejudice, and arrogance of its own; and, being without any necessary connection with love or conscience, it has often been a reactionary, disturbing, or selfish force in politics and events, even when well acquainted with the field of politics, as ever were any of the forms of demagogy in the popular life. ”

“ I am old and broken, and it never was my system to impose upon myself when one can deceive nobody else. I have spirits enough for my use, that is, amongst my friends and contemporaries: I like Young people and their happiness for every thing but to live with; but I cannot learn their language, nor tell them old stories, of which I must explain every step as I go. Politics' the proper resource of age, I detest—I am Contented, but see few that are so—and I never will be led by any man's self-interest. ”

“ In civil life it seldom happens that any one interest draws a very large number of men to act in concert; much skill is required to bring such an interest into existence: but in politics opportunities present themselves every day. ”

“ Good men employ every proper precaution to protect their property from the lawless. When an injury is done to them individually they are swift to invoke the avenging arm of justice. They are faithful guardians of their own homes and treasures against the untitled spoiler, while they are criminally indifferent to the public wrongs done by those who, in the enactment and execution of the laws, directly affect their happiness and prosperity. Do not answer that politics have become disreputable. Such a declaration is a confession of guilt. ”

“ The women have changed our literature, and the change has been good.
In every field where woman has become a competitor of man she has either become, or given evidence that she is to become, his equal. My own opinion is that woman is naturally the equal of man and that in time, that is to say, when she has had the opportunity and the training, she will produce in the world of art as great pictures, as great statues, and in the world of literature as great books, dramas and poems as man has produced or will produce.
There is nothing very hard to understand in the politics of a country. ”