Quotes & Sayings About Political Discourse

I always loved horror as a kid. On the one hand, I really love monsters, because in a way I feel like I related to their outsider status and like the sentimental romantic plight of the monster. More importantly though I feel like people are completely motivated by fear, especially with our political system here in America which is just degenerating into more and more fear mongering and it gets in the way of real discourse, plus it's just something I'm obsessive about and have always been a little bit of a paranoid guy. — Larry Fessenden

As an artist who lives here and wants a more sophisticated engagement between local social dynamics and global discourse, it's great to see that reflected via the relationships we've developed with our customers. For some people it's a political act to eat from us three days a week because they recognize they are financially supporting the premise of the project each time they come. 95% of our annual revenue is purely from the public via food sales. — Jon Rubin

A sat note crept into his voice. "But something's missing now from political discourse."

"What?"

"Caring about others," he said. — Ellen Levine

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups ... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. — Philip K. Dick

The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal. — Herbert Marcuse

Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse. — John Lewis

It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. — Lawrence Lessig

Sorilla wasn't going to pretend that she understood how political discourse worked, but her idea of negotiation took five minutes and generally involved violence or the threat of violence if it lasted much longer. — Evan Currie

A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think - I think they're disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he's an old Chicago politician. — Bernard Goldberg

Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship. — Olympia Snowe

It's pretty standard fare in political discourse. You misconstrue what somebody said. You isolate a statement, you lend your interpretation to it and then feign moral outrage. And Democrats have been doing it for years. — John F. Kerry

The dominance of [an ideology] is shown by the fact that the dominated classes live their conditions of political existence through the forms of dominant political discourse: this means that often they live even their revolt against domination of the system within the frame of reference of the dominant legitimacy. — Nicos Poulantzas

The terms of political discourse are designed so as to prevent thought. — Noam Chomsky

Political discourse has been reduced to "Where's the beef?" "Read my lips," and "Make my day." Where are the assassins when we really need them? — George Carlin

The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination. — Jean Genet

The World. Hugo had once told Nathaniel in Will's presence, was made by many men, but shaped by few. The important thing was to be one of those few; to find a place in which you could change the repetitive patterns of the many Through political influence and intellectual discourse, and failing either of these , through benign coercion. — Clive Barker

The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy. — David Novak

You often see in Washington those who disagree you described as stupid or evil. It's one of the most unfortunate trends of modern political discourse. Portraying opponents as too dumb to know the truth but smart enough and wanting people to suffer. — Ted Cruz

It's very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised. — Nicola Sturgeon

[I]n so far as postmodern politics involves a '[t]heoretical retreat from the problem of domination within capitalism,' it is here, in this silent suspension of class analysis, that we are dealing with an exemplary case of the mechanism of ideological displacement: when class antagonism is disavowed, when its key structuring role is suspended, 'other markers of social difference may come to bear an inordinate weight; indeed, they may bear all the weight of the sufferings produced by capitalism in addition to that attributable to the explicitly politicized marking.' In other words, this displacement accounts for the somewhat 'excessive' way the discourse of postmodern identity politics insists on the horrors of sexism, racism, and so on - this 'excess' comes from the fact that these other '-isms' have to bear the surplus-investment from the class struggle whose extent is not acknowledged. — Slavoj Zizek

Existing political philosophies all developed before evolutionary game theory, so they do not take equilibrium selection into account. Socialism pretends that individuals are not selfish sexual competitors, so it ignores equilibria altogether. Conservatism pretends that there is only one possible equilibrium - a nostalgic version of the status quo - that society could play. Libertarianism ignores the possibility of equilibrium selection at the level of rational social discourse, and assumes that decentralized market dynamics will magically lead to equilibria that yield the highest aggregate social benefits. Far from being a scientific front for a particular set of political views, modern evolutionary psychology makes most standard views look simplistic and unimaginitive. — Geoffrey Miller

Americans should not have to wonder if their government is actively looking to subvert them or their political views. We live in a nation where respect for differing beliefs and a vibrant political discourse play an important role in shaping our government. — Mike Turner

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation. — Cecily McMillan

you don't get far in political discourse with counterfactual arguments that "it would have been even worse. — Alan S. Blinder

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice. — Glenn Greenwald

The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth. — S.I. Hayakawa

Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong on facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left. — Ann Coulter

A civilian-based diplomacy supports noncommercial, nonprofit, and publicly-subsidized media to counteract the corporate-controlled, for-profit, private media that dominate political discourse; and works to place media control, ownership, and lobbying at the center of public policy debate. — Nancy Snow

In our national discourse and in pursuing our national agenda, we must never leave anyone behind. We must reach out to the many who may have been disaffected and left confused by political games, deceit and showmanship. The people first must transcend every level of society. — Najib Razak

Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another. — P. J. O'Rourke

It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future, — Jay Rockefeller

The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him, although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp. — Plato

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we're not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we're not even getting into that question. — Isaiah Washington

... CEOs are the ghost writers of the political discourse ... — Paulo Da Costa

We have entered an Orwellian era in which entitlement replaces responsibility, coercion is described as compassion, compulsory redistribution is called sharing, race quotas substitute for diversity, and suicide is prescribed as 'death with dignity.' Political discourse has become completely corrupted. The reason is that if you tell people directly that you want to raise their taxes, transfer their wealth, count them by skin color, or let doctors kill them, most will object. Statists know this and therefore are obliged to obfuscate. — Theodore J. Forstmann

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal - and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math. — Lionel Shriver

I've watched politics for years. Republicans rarely get credit for the good things that happen in the economy during their watch. Democrats always get more credit than they deserve. They are just better at political discourse that we are. — George W. Bush

Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that's uncivil. — Richard Dreyfuss

Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny have created an important political radio show that balances humor and unreported news. At a time when media conglomerates dominate the airwaves, independent media like Citizen Radio is vital to national discourse. — Noam Chomsky

The reduction of political discourse to sound bites is one of the worst things that's happened in American political life. — John Silber

I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow. — Joseph Brodsky

Politics isn't something that really interested me; I, of course, care about what's going on in the world, but so much of political discourse now is not necessarily about doing what's right. — Mike O'Malley

There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot. — Mark McKinnon

Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse. — Zephyr Teachout

We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands ... Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship ... But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse ... The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend's presence, is concerned with the common world. — Hannah Arendt

On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech. — Ed Gillespie

Is political discourse still just shouting opinions about subjective, hot-button issues based on poor understanding and outright ignorance about which agreements can never be reached? — Jeffrey Rowland

Canadian official multiculturalism has developed through the 1970s and '80s, and has become in the '90s a major part of Canadian political discourse in Canada rather than in the United States, which is also a multi-ethnic country, may be due to the lack of an assimilationist discourse so pervasive in the U.S. The melting pot thesis has not been popular in Canada, where the notion of a social and cultural mosaic has had a greater influence among liberal critics. This mosaic approach has not been compensated with an integrative politics of antiracism or of class struggle which is sensitive to the racialization involved in Canadian class formation. The organized labour movement in Canada has repeatedly displayed anti-immigrant sentiments. For any inspiration for an antiracist theorization and practice of class struggle Canadians have looked to the United States or the Caribbean. — Himani Bannerji

Education may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual, in a society like our own, can gain access to any kind of discourse. But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it. — Michel Foucault

I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level. — Ayad Akhtar

The world of public discourse - political, social, diplomatic, commercial - has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of their veracity. Language has been turned on its head. — Deena Metzger

If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire. Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk. — Erica Jong

Our country's political discourse and debate are enriched by discussions of the political implications of our faith traditions, whether they are taking place in our communities, at our dinner tables, or in our places of worship. — David Price

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite

I've become very interested in the spectrum of political discourse as seen on the cable news channels that are conveniently right in a row on my cable provider's dial. I can flip from Fox to CNN to HLN to MSNBC, and I find myself at night flipping it back and forth through them, and it's something of an addiction. — Chris Carter

American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression. — Erik Larson

They were and are children of privilege ... the privilege taught, learned, and imbibed, in a "liberal arts education" is the privilege to indict. These children have, in the main, never worked, learned to obey, command, construct, amend, or complete - to actually contribute to the society. They have learned to be shrill, and that their indictment, on the economy, on sex, on race, on the environment, though based on no experience other than hearsay, must trump any discourse, let alone opposition. It occurred to me that I had seen this behavior elsewhere, where it was called developmental difficulty. — David Mamet

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of 'dissenting' bravery. — Christopher Hitchens

In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying. — Etgar Keret

I am troubled that sometimes in our political discourse we spend all of our time focused on the challenges of the next century rather than on the opportunities of the new century. — Marco Rubio

the growing materialism of our societies. This materialism informs political discourse at every level, making wealth and its distribution the only issue that is discussed for long. As a result, people think of conservatism merely as a form of complacency towards the current system of material rewards, which has nothing whatever to say about the things that 'money can't buy', or about the effect of the consumer society on our deeper values. Yet — Roger Scruton

Soon after [George Yeo] became a politician, he made a famous speech, and for the first time, the term "OB markers" was used in political discourse. He was using golfing language to vividly make the point that Singapore needed OB markers to demarcate areas of public life that should remain out of bounds to social activism and the media. Otherwise, society paid an unacceptably high price. His essential point was that Singaporeans worked better if the cover of the banyan tree did not remain so broad. He was signalling that the state should pull back and give the people more free play. — Cheong Yip Seng

Obviously, some part of us loves feeling 1) right and 2) wronged. But outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but, over time, devour us from the inside out. Except it's even more insidious than most vices because we don't even consciously acknowledge it's a pleasure. We prefer to think of it as a disagreeable but fundamentally healthy reaction to negative stimuli, like pain or nausea, rather than admit that it's a shameful kick we eagerly indulge again and again, like compulsive masturbation. — Tim Kreider

We can't handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what's done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Alas, it has been hard for me to fit these ideas about fragility and antifragility within the current U.S. political discourse - that beastly two-fossil system. Most of the time, the Democratic side of the U.S. spectrum favors hyper-intervention, unconditional regulation, and large government, while the Republican side loves large corporations, unconditional deregulation, and militarism - both are the same to me here. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding "law and order" rather than "segregation forever. — Michelle Alexander

If millions of Americans choose to weigh in on the outcome of 'American Idol' through text messages and the Web, then why not harness similar technological tools to encourage discourse on the political landscape? — Ruzwana Bashir

Nima Shirazi is a rare voice of rational analysis and political insight that provides an eloquent counter to the pervasive absurdities that make up popular political discourse. — Susan Abulhawa

I speak for Kashmiri pundits because injustice has been done to them, and the political discourse doesn't give them enough importance. — Anupam Kher

Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy ... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none. — Neal Stephenson

There is a lot of noise and conflict in our political discourse, which is fun to cover, but I'm convinced from my travels that people also thirst for more details as well as insight and context. — John King

The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse. — Neil Postman

..."extreme capitalism": the obsessive, uncritical penetration of the concept of the market into every aspect of American life, and the attempt to drive out every other institution, including law, art, culture, public education, Social Security, unions, community, you name it. It is the conflation of markets with populism, with democracy, with diversity, with liberty, and with choice---and so the denial of any form of choice that imposes limits on the market. More than that, it is the elimination of these separate concepts from our political discourse, so that we find ourselves looking to the stock market to fund retirement, college education, health care, and having forgotten that in other wealthy and developed societies these are rights, not the contingent outcomes of speculative games.

James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government, University of Texas. — James K. Galbraith

It's important that people understand who I am and where I come from and not just have it shaped by purely political discourse. — Justin Trudeau

I love the best of all the traditions. My discipline is the take-no-prisoners language of good poetry, but a language that actually frees us from prejudice, no matter what religion or political persuasion they are. I try to create a river-like discourse. The river is not political, it's not on your side or against you. It's an invitation into the onward flow. — David Whyte

As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate. — Al Franken

And let no one suppose that I claim that just living can be taught for, in a word, I hold that there does not exist an art of the kind which can implant sobriety and justice into depraved natures. Nevertheless, I do think that the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form such qualities of character — Isocrates

Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred-other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west? — Glenn Greenwald

The willingness to reexamine lifelong beliefs because of conflicting data takes enormous courage, and contrasts sharply with recent examples of public discourse in which our political, cultural, and religious leaders have fit data to preconceived theories. — Donal O'Shea

truisms at least have the merit of being true, which distinguishes them from a good deal of political discourse. And — Noam Chomsky

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. — Norman G. Finkelstein

When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma - hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy. — Neil Steinberg

The danger we face does not come from religion. It comes from a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is one of the symptoms of a dying culture. In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population's attention was diverted by a series of frontier wars and violent and elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome's emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a form in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not prerogative of the citizen to think. — Chris Hedges

Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse. — Howard Zinn

I did learn that some of the things that are great for locker rooms are inappropriate for political discourse. That's a wisdom I've garnered. — George Allen

If only there were an inhabited field of discourse where Christians were thinking Christianly about everything, there would be something nutritive for Christian minds to feed on. But Christians are being truncated and deformed by the fact that men and women have to leap about from one tradition of discourse to another as they move in thought and discussion from moral matters to political matters, from ecclesiastical matters, to cultural matters. — Harry Blamires

The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be 'spun' to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition. — Richard Lindzen

If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others. — Fareed Zakaria