Politic Quotes & Sayings

Saving our planet requires you to be ambitious in what you aim, and, equally, in how hard you work to reach your goal. — Ban Ki-moon

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic? — P. J. O'Rourke

Virtue inside is the real value of human, if ldp cannot rule this country, of course our country not yet be cured. All LDP (League for Democracy Party) supporters must be clear this point. — Khem Veasna

If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash. — George Washington

Know how to play the card of contempt. It is the most politic kind of revenge. For there are many of whom we should have known nothing if their distinguished opponents had taken no notice of them. There is no revenge like oblivion, for it is the entombment of the unworthy in the dust of their own nothingness. — Baltasar Gracian

Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It's for real though, let's connect, politic ... ditto!
We could trade places, get lifted in the staircases,
Word up, peace, incarcerated scarfaces. — Raekwon

Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see decline of empire. — Jim Cooper

A true brave man is the one who dares to work against personal interest. — Khem Veasna

You better believe that I want to build a Christian nation, because the only option is a pagan nation. Not that the government can make someone a Christian by decree. A Christian nation would be defined as We acknowledge God in our body politic, in our communities, that the God of the Bible is our God, and, we acknowledge that His law is supreme. — Randall Terry

The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack. — Theodore Roosevelt

Everything is acceptable until we stop accepting them. — Peter Adejimi

Avoid the politic, the factious fool,
The busy, buzzing, talking harden'd knave;
The quaint smooth rogue that sins against his reason,
Calls saucy loud sedition public zeal,
And mutiny the dictates of his spirit. — Thomas Otway

My title is intended to suggest that the community of scientists is organized in a way which resembles certain features of a body politic and works according to economic principles similar to those by which the production of material goods is regulated. — Michael Polanyi

Citizenship is more than an individual exchange of freedoms for rights; it is also membership in a body politic, a nation, and a community. To be deemed fair, a system must offer its citizens equal opportunities for public recognition, and groups cannot systematically suffer from misrecognition in the form of stereotype and stigma. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice. — Baruch Spinoza

I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness. — William Shakespeare

America needs to be careful not to let aging baby boomers define its outlook. We cannot afford to farm out our vision of the future to a retiring generation. We can already see some indications of where that will lead: our political, cultural, and economic conversations today overflow with the language of decay and corrosion, as if our body politic is itself an aging boomer looking back upon his glory days. — Yuval Levin

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular - but one must take it because it is right. — David Levithan

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered. — B.R. Ambedkar

Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal. — Carlos Fuentes

Fox opposes a Syria peace plan because its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless and irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic, to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust, and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic succubus-like existence. — Jon Stewart

The members of a body-politic call it "the state" when it is passive, "the sovereign" when it is active, and a "power" when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title "people," and they refer to one another individually as "citizens" when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as "subjects" when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within ... for the traitor appears not to be a traitor ... he rots the soul of a nation ... he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

is perhaps true to say, not that civil liberty is the child of religious liberty, but that liberty, whether civil or religious, was the work often reluctantly, sometimes unconsciously, undertaken by communities of men who had an end higher than political, who refused to submit religion to politic arguments, who fought for ends never entirely utilitarian. — John Neville Figgis

The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power ... Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favorable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood (Eisen und Blut). — Otto Von Bismarck

Cautious reticence is, in nine cases out of ten, cowardly betrayal. The best policy is never to be politic, but to proclaim every atom of the truth so far as God has taught it to you. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other "isms," it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Being sad is my happiness. — Khem Veasna

Among the cancers devouring the American body politic, one of the most virulent involves liberals who play the race card as carelessly as children playing 52 Pickup. — Deroy Murdock

A man who excels in creating new things is the one who is good at dreaming when not sleeping. — Khem Veasna

Better to be ordinary people in a superior country than to be a president in a disreputable country. — Khem Veasna

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. — Bill Moyers

Political job is not a business job but it is a job of the people who have generous heart who want to help others with their views. — Khem Veasna

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic. — Samuel Freeman Miller

I'm a major feminist. There's a real politic in life, where I've been in rooms where real decisions are made, and it's a lot of powerful white men. There are women in those rooms, but not as many as there should be. — Courtney Love

Almost all the prosperity of a public society and civil community does, under God, depend on their rulers. They are like the main springs or wheels in a machine that keep every part in their due motion, and are in the body politic, as in the vitals in the body natural, and as the pillars and the foundation in a building. — Jonathan Edwards

Apparently, we have become such a hyper-individualized culture that it is impossible to develop an argument based on how individual cases fit into the fabric of the common good. — David Brooks

Politics is the art of reaching a goal that benefits all citizens of a nation. — Khem Veasna

If you do not clean up your sociaty now, therefore the legacy you have left for your children is nothing other than an unjust society. — Khem Veasna

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right — Martin Luther King Jr.

DEMOCRACY is a form of leading state in which the right and power" must be in the hands of the people and absolutely must have a system to ensure the right and power" of the people permanently. — Khem Veasna

Maybe we weren't at the Last Supper, but we're certainly going to be at the next one. — Bella Abzug

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise. — Francis Bacon

Patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of a body politic to one end. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral. — Francis Bacon

We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name. — George F. Kennan

In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,
the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth. — Francis Parkman

The body is made by the thought that lies behind it. The body politic is thus the expression of national thought. — Swami Vivekananda

The world needed gentle men to rule if the people were to live in peace, not the warmongers and conniving men she so often witnessed wearing the crimson of the Imperial Council. — A.H. Septimius

There have always been hucksters, cranks and populists who see a brief rise in American politics, going back to William Jennings Bryan at the turn of the century. The body politic has a way of expelling these invaders. — Joseph Rago

Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body. — Henry Ward Beecher

To put leaders in their proper place is to think honorably of them and their families, to support their policies and to advise them, and not to bring them down because of their mistakes or errors, which may affect public interest and national stability. However, we are never to obey of aid them in unjust or sinful acts. — Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy. — Gloria Steinem

National politics and elections are dominated by emotions, by lack of self-confidence, by fear of the other, by insecurity, by infection of the body politic by the virus of victimhood. — Tariq Ramadan

What imperialists actually wanted was expansion of political power without the foundation of the body politic. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of "superfluous" money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within national borders. For the first time, investment of power did not pave the way for investment of money, since uncontrollable investments in distant countries threatened to transform large strata of society into gamblers, to change the whole capitalist economy from a system of production to a system of financial speculation, and to replace the profits of production with profits in commissions. The decade immediately before the imperialist era, the seventies of the last century, witnessed an unparalleled increase in swindles, financial scandals, and gambling in the stock market. — Hannah Arendt

Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness. — Rick Perlstein

JAQUES (10) I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these, but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. My — William Shakespeare

To put this even more bluntly, one might think about the difference between adding traditional and contemporary Indigenous art to the National Gallery of Canada's historical Canadian wing and imagining the entire gallery curated from an Indigenous perspective of what a "National Gallery of Canada" might mean.37 Put slightly differently, the project of Indigenous representation in the gallery in Canada has been defined as "bringing aboriginal art in to the history of Canadian art" rather than of incorporating settler history into the history of Aboriginal art.38 Would such reimaginings mean, for example, a move away from the primacy of a liberal politic and of the artist genius as a cultural application of that politic? — Lynda Jessup

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists
believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic. — Woodrow Wilson

If you read the books then you have no conclusion you do not dare to kick out this idea or theory "wrong", this idea or theory "right", if you have no conclusion from what you read, your reading is not useful. — Khem Veasna

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war. — Bayard Rustin

Cowardice asks: Is it safe? Expediency asks: Is it politic? But Conscience asks: Is it right? — William Morley Punshon

There is nothing new in state interventionism. It is as old and reactionary as societal organization itself. Always, when it permeates the body politic, it kills the nation. — Spruille Braden

In a thing, they can create a pretext coined hundreds of excuses , but the truth is only one. — Khem Veasna

Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest. — Baron De Montesquieu

Today you may not understand me and tomorrow you all think as you thought as yesterday; but i believe in my mind that one day you all will understand me; though there is no my presence. — Khem Veasna

Political campaign must not be aimed at collecting ballots, instead, it's honestly aim at seeking support for an ideology. — Khem Veasna

If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all nations, kindreds [sic] tongues and peoples; and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come. — Frederick Douglass

A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives- our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings- all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity. Here, we attempt to bridge the contradictions in our experience:
We are the colored in a white feminist movement.
We are the feminists among the people of our culture.
We are often the lesbians among the straight.
We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words. — Michelle Cliff

The problem that is to solve urgently is the ignorance of the people. — Khem Veasna

You. What is the moral difference, if
any, between the soldier and the civilian?"
"The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic
virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body
politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.
The civilian does not. — Heinlein Robert A.

I want to see Christianity enhance our humanity instead of rescue us from some fall. I don't want us to be depending on this supernatural God up in the sky; I want us to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we have to live out the meaning of God with other people. That means we must live in mutual respect and interdependence; it means we have to limit our own desires in order for the body politic to survive. — John Shelby Spong

The body politic: the slow agonizing death of demarcation & the quick Caesarian section birth of chaos. — Dean Cavanagh

I do not think I was a hothead - not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was a boy. Slavery is an abomination on the American soul, ineradicable stain on our body politic. But Penn Center lit a fire that has never gone out, and the election of President Barack Obama was one of the happiest days of my life. — Pat Conroy

You read nothing if you dare not giving any judgement. — Khem Veasna

Love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny. — Diane Ackerman

They who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it. — Edmund Burke

The devil knew what he did when he made men politic; he crossed himself by it. — William Shakespeare

Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. — Alexander Hamilton

Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages. — Baltasar Gracian

The danger of restorative nostalgia lies in its belief that the mutilated 'wholeness' of the body politic can be repaired. But the reflective nostalgic understands deep down that loss is irrecoverable: Time wounds all wholes. To exist in Time is to suffer through an endless exile, a successive severing from those precious few moments of feeling at home in the world. In pop terms, Morrissey is the supreme poet of reflective nostalgia. — Simon Reynolds

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Politicians sre the same all over.They promise to build bridges, even where there are no rivers. — Nikita Khrushev

Can we allow our hearts to treat our people as members of your great family. — Khem Veasna

I have trod a measure, I have flattered a lady, I have
been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy. — William Shakespeare

Compromise, contrary to popular opinion, does not mean selling out one's principles. Compromise means working out differences to forge a solution which fits the diversity of the body politic. — Madeleine M. Kunin

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But Perdition was a much asylum as prison, and when you were standing in somebody else's delusions, it was both polite and politic to play along. — Ann Aguirre

This country will not be a peaceful place for us to live if we do not make it to be a peaceful place with our fists. Only with our fists, we can make this country a peaceful place to live. — Khem Veasna

If the president is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract. Its vast and convoluted inner workings may be mysterious and unpleasant, but in the end they excrete a great deal of material whose successful passage is crucial to our nation's survival. This is Congress's duty. — Jon Stewart

Currying favor with special interests at the expense of the public good is a way for politicians to fund their campaigns and secure their future for when they leave government. It has been firmly enshrined as the primary source of money for politics since the Sherman Act did away with patronage. So long as politicians are able to tap special interests for these purposes, they will find ways to reward them with public policy - and they will do whatever it takes to protect the programs they have already put in place. What reformers really need to do first is attack the way the business of politics is conducted, rather than focusing on the products of that business. Then, and only then , will the cancer of cronyism be removed from the body politic. — Anonymous

In order for completeness first hand most people have to live with the truth. — Khem Veasna

No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No woman delights in poverty. No woman yields when she can prevail. No woman is honestly meek. — H.L. Mencken

Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I want to get rid of the Indian problem. [ ... ] Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian Question and no Indian Department. — Duncan Campbell Scott

We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury (during that time) is offered to the meanest member of the House is to be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of Parliament. — Henry VIII Of England

In the United States, the Constitution is a health chart left by the Founding Fathers which shows whether or not the body politic is in good health. If the national body is found to be in poor health, the Founding Fathers also left a prescription for the restoration of health called the Declaration of Independence. — Dick Gregory

Corporations are "worms in the body politic" — Thomas Hobbes