1980s Political Quotes & Sayings

In Taiwan during the 1960s and mainland China in the 1980s, conceptualism played a role similar to that of Dada, that is, as a vehicle for upsetting conventions - aesthetic, social, and political. Almost all Chinese conceptual artists proclaimed an allegiance to Dada. On the mainland, they also embraced traditional Chan Budhism, wich encourages an ironic sensibility and rejects the privileging of any one doctrine in the search for enlightment. Combined, Dada and Chan Budhism became a potent weapon in the Chinese avant-garde's assault on business as usual. — Gao Minglu

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s. — Enrique Pena Nieto

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us. — Harry Browne

It is often said in soccer that a country's particular style of play bears the fingerprints of its social and political nature. Thus the Germans are unfailingly characterized as resourceful and organized, while Brazilians are said to dance with the ball to the free-form, samba rhythms of Carnival. In the husk of cliche lies a kernel of truth. The Communist system of China had produced a collectivist style of women's soccer from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. — Jere Longman

Organizational Development: The New Christian Right of the 1980s was dominated by paper organizations that were essentially the mailing lists of a handful of politicized ministers. Such organizations were better at issuing press releases than doing the hard work of political mobilization and advocacy. By contrast, the movement of the 1990s has generated a plethora of grass-roots organizations that allocate meaningful responsibilities to individual members. The goal is to create an army of grassroots activists who know how to stimulate political change. — Kenneth D. Wald

During the 1970s and the 1980s, economic realities became increasingly central to international relations. Thus, the sub-field of international political economy (IPE) grew and became a major part of international relations. To quote Goldstein again, 'Scholars of IPE study trade relations and financial relations among nations and try to understand how nations have separated politically to create and maintain institutions that regulate the flow of international economic and financial institutions. — V N Khanna

Or we could change the definition in another way. We could remove the part of the definition that refers to "supernatural powers." Then sorcery and witchcraft would include beliefs that unknown persons harm others using techniques that cannot be demonstrated to be real or that are not observable. In the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy played on people's fears in the 1950s by claiming that the government and Hollywood were filled with Communists dedicated to overturning all that Americans hold dear. In the 1980s and 1990s, various supremacists blamed certain political factions and minorities for social problems and what they believed to be the degeneration of their nation's values. Will there be other witch hunts in the twenty-first century? — James Peoples

In the 1980s ... it was a liberal philosophy of government that changed the rules to suit its own political ends. We were forfeiting our freedoms to conform to a humanistic philosophy that was patently antireligious. — James G. Watt

I think the Bush Administration had basically inherited a policy toward Iraq from the Reagan/Bush Administration that saw Iraq as a kind of fire wall against Iranian fundamentalism. And as it developed over the 1980s, it became a real political run-a-muck ... even though the Iraqis were known to be harboring Palestinian terrorists. — Rick Atkinson

Something happened during the 1980s - perhaps the political climate of that time - that caused me to ask how a people would become part of a system that oppresses their own people. — Edward P. Jones

A handbook for users of the Arpanet at MIT in the 1980s reminded them that 'sending electronic messages over the ARPAnet for commercial profit or political purposes is both antisocial and illegal'. The internet revolution might have happened ten years earlier if academics had not been dependent on a government network antipathetic to commercial use. Well, — Matt Ridley

The development of a political-economic framework to explore long-run institutional change occupied me during all of the 1980s and led to the publication of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance in 1990. — Douglass North

A lot of that, "Have you ever noticed that [specific Florida player] is like the [dated cultural reference] version of [obscure player from the middle 1980s] except that his [some ridiculous stoner concept about grizzly bears] has been filtered through the political ideology of [random indie artist currently on tour with Built to Spill]?" We all have to pay the rent, rockers. I know who I am. — Chuck Klosterman

He recommended I read the book Words That Work, written by Republican political strategist Frank Luntz. It's brilliant. Matt added, "If someone likes that book, then I might point them to George Lakoff. He has a great seminal work from the 1980s called Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things." He loves books about framing and language. — Timothy Ferriss

The polarization of Congress; the decline of civility; and the rise of attack politics in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the early years of the new century are a blot on our political system and a disservice to the American people. — Edward Brooke

From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today's dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent. — Robert B. Reich

Beginning in the mid to late 1980s, poverty, underdevelopment, economic dependence, ethnic and class conflict, lack of political practices prioritizing equal citizenship rights, and fragile political and economic institutions all came to be structural handicaps from the legacy of European colonialism. Colonialism was not the source of all of Africa's problems, but it was a significant contributor. What — Edmond J. Keller

Handwritten political posters - often composed in an artless and unadorned style, usually just words on plain white paper - were ubiquitous in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s and were one of the few outlets available for expressing political views. Most posters were anonymous and put up under the cover of night. — Kim Young-ha