Political Enemies Quotes & Sayings

The king's edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate the armed men of any nationality or province who might attack them and their women and children, and to plunder the property of their enemies. Ester 8:11 — Bible. New International Version

the most significant contributing factor to Heydrich's radicalization was his immersion in a political milieu of young and often highly educated men who thrived on violent notions of cleansing Germany from its supposed internal enemies while simultaneously rejecting bourgeois norms of morality as weak, outdated and inappropriate for securing Germany's national rebirth. — Robert Gerwarth

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational
if not necessarily moral or decent
actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane. — George Friedman

Our enemies are real. But so are the moral questions and long-term political implications of drone strikes. — Bruce Feirstein

Our political culture is now so debased that we regularly hear 'do gooders' getting the blame for things. Enviromentalists trying to stop a coal-burning power plant or a new runway that will (let's just remember) DESTROY THE EARTH are branded as our enemies, these 'do gooders'. Like doing good is a bad thing. You read all the time in the press that 'do gooders' are to blame - a sweepingly derogatory term. Or even worse, the 'so-called do gooders'. I've never once read that the blame was being put fairly and squarely on 'cunts', and let's face it 'cunts' must be behind fucking things up far more things than 'do gooders'. If it's not 'cunts' then I blame those 'so-called cunts'. — Frankie Boyle

Even though a part of Lippmann was tempted to retreat from the world, to build "walls against chaos," he fought that temptation. He challenged himself, grappled with his demons, and deliberately pursued a career that forced him into the political thick of battle, did not allow him to withdraw from a fight, and exposed him every day to his enemies. That took a special kind of courage for a man who shunned personal contention. — Ronald Steel

Spontaneous order is self-contradictory. Spontaneity connotes the ebullition of surprises. It is highly entropic and disorderly. It is entrepreneurial and complex. Order connotes predictability and equilibrium. It is what is not spontaneous. It includes moral codes, constitutional restraints, personal disciplines, educational integrity, predictable laws, reliable courts, stable money, trustworthy finance, strong families, dependable defense, and police powers. Order requires political guidance, sovereignty, and leadership. It normally entails religious beliefs. The entire saga of the history of the West conveys the courage and sacrifice necessary to enforce and defend these values against their enemies. — George Gilder

Is it just possible,' he sighed, 'that the most vigorous and obldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? — Sinclair Lewis

It is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoint elaborated in this book. The rightful and proper label is liberalism. Unfortunately, "As a supreme, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label",' so that liberalism has, in the United States, come to have a very different meaning than it did in the nineteenth century or does today over much of the Continent of Europe. — Milton Friedman

We need to understand that we are not each others' enemies in this country. And it is only the political class that derives its power by creating friction. It is only the media that derives its importance by creating friction ... that uses every little thing to create this chasm between people. This is not who we are. — Ben Carson

Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn. — James Baldwin

The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter ... With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians' control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us ... war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops. — Rachel Maddow

Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God. — Goldwin Smith

I have experienced the intensity of patriotism as a submarine officer, the ambitions of a competitive businessman, and the intensity of political debate. I have been sorely tempted to launch a military attack on foreigners, and have felt the frustration of having to negotiate with allies or even former enemies to reach a consensus instead of taking more decisive unilateral action. — Jimmy Carter

It just doesn't make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies "out there" with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is "in here" with us - embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies. — Jim Wallis

Anyone who speaks of punishing their political enemies in on the wrong side. It is clearly evil and we have a responsibility to say so. — Glenn Beck

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter. — Thomas Hobbes

A vibrant civil society can challenge those in power by documenting corruption or uncovering activities like the murder of political enemies. In democracies, this function is mostly performed by the media, NGOs or opposition parties. — Evgeny Morozov

I will always remember and we must all remember that Democrats are our political rivals, not our enemies, and they deserve our respect. — Ken Mehlman

Republican-controlled bank in the city. Plenty of Republicans were inherently suspicious of banks, but many would welcome the opportunity to use one that didn't require them to get into bed with their political enemies. Hamilton was infuriated when he realized how Burr had used him. Once the company had received its charter, it abandoned all pretense of providing the city with clean water, instead laying in a pipe system that transported the contaminated well water around the city. This incident perhaps marked the turning point in Hamilton's relationship with Burr; friendly despite their political differences, the most famous duel in American history lay in their future, and only one of them would survive it. The — Michael W. Simmons

There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs. — Lord Chesterfield

Capitalism's biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action, — Raghuram Rajan

If all our political and intellectual elite offers by way of a national culture is "pop music, gambling, fashionable clothes or television," then we can neither mount a convincing intellectual defense against our enemies, nor hope to integrate intelligent, inquiring, and unfulfilled Muslim youths young men principally, of course to our way of life. — Anthony Daniels

I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can remember. — Gerald R. Ford

With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato. — Karl Popper

Now, in this generation, the entirety of the globe is facing an ideological and socio-political collapse on a grand scale. This is by design, it is man-made. The outcome is still carefully assessed with little room for error or improvement. There is only one flaw: the divine element in humanity. Our sentient consciousness bestows with the capacity to support the freedom of thought and movement with the inherent awareness that both come at a cost. When we speak our minds, we are going to offend and be offended. There are no safe spaces in conversation. People will say things we don't like. We have to accept this is the price of freedom of speech. When we allow for freedom of movement during times of war, we have to accept that we are inviting in enemies as well as refugees, especially when we don't bother to discern which is which. Even the best, most selfless intentions can pave the way to our downfall... — Anita B. Sulser PhD

Looking back later, acquaintances marveled at the feat of this awkward, skinny kid the yearbook called "a rather quiet chap about campus," dour and brooding, who couldn't even win a girlfriend, who attracted enemies, who seemed, a schoolmate recalled, "the man least likely to succeed in politics." They hadn't learned what Nixon was learning. Being hated by the right people was no impediment to political success. The unpolished, after all, were everywhere in the majority. — Rick Perlstein

I declare that this government is no longer a constitutional and moral form of government. I will deal with it, and I will obey its laws, and I will support it when it is defending our country from foreign and domestic enemies. I will vote in its elections and participate in its political debates. But I will never accept it. I aim at a restoration of constitutional and moral order. — Lawrence Auster

Harmonizing religion and science makes you seem like an open-minded and reasonable person, while asserting their incompatibility makes enemies and brands you as "militant." The reason is clear: religion occupies a privileged place in our society. Attacking it is off-limits, although going after other supernatural or paranormal beliefs like ESP, homeopathy, or political worldviews is not. Accommodationism is not meant to defend science, which can stand on its own, but to show that in some way religion can still make credible claims about the world. — Jerry A. Coyne

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What it came down to was a search not for the most talent, the greatest brilliance, but for the fewest black marks, the fewest objections. The man who had made the fewest enemies in an era when forceful men espousing good causes had made many enemies: the Kennedys were looking for someone who made very small waves. They were looking for a man to fill the most important Cabinet post, a job requiring infinite qualities of intelligence, wisdom and sophistication, a knowledge of both this country and the world, and they were going at it as presidential candidates had often filled that other most crucial post, the Vice-Presidency, by choosing someone who had offended the fewest people. Everybody's number-two choice. — David Halberstam

The people are fed up with their elected officials playing the blame game and treating their political counterparts as enemies. — Carl Lewis

The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political. — Abhijit Naskar

Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies. — Francis Parker Yockey

Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments. — Robert Walpole

I've got all of my enemies here in the Cabinet where I can keep an eye on them. — John Diefenbaker

An interlocking set of new enemies was emerging: globalization, foreigners, multiculturalism, environmental regulation, high taxes, and the incompetent politicians who could not cope with these challenges. A widening public disaffection for the political Establishment opened the way for an "antipolitics" that the extreme Right could satisfy better than the far Left after 1989. After the Marxist Left lost credibility as a plausible protest vehicle when the Soviet Union collapsed, the radical Right had no serious rivals as the mouthpiece for the angry "losers" of the new postindustrial, globalized, multiethnic Europe. — Robert O. Paxton

The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies. — Maximilien De Robespierre

The Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly said that America is not at war with Islam. And Republicans need to be vocal about condemning anyone, in America or abroad, who seeks to lump all Muslims together as America's enemies. America is not at war with Islam, and Republicans must continue to follow President Bush's example in condemning any expressions of prejudice against Muslims. — Margaret Hoover

Again and again, I've seen Bush turn a blind eye as his henchmen have leveled zealous attacks against his political enemies - assaults which the president himself has sometimes directly encouraged. — Paul Begala

My political enemies I can freely forgive; but as for who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country
Doctor, that is a different case. — Andrew Jackson

[As part of Camus' refusal to debate his political enemies publicly after their vitriolic responses to the publication of 'The Rebel'] At this point, the least sentence I might say will be used in a way that disgusts me in advance ... It would be impossible for me in that case to continue expressing myself with academic politeness. I am mistaken for a deliberately polite man whom one may insult in all safety. — Olivier Todd

Political criticism is our enemies' best friend. — Bernard Kerik

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were political enemies, but they became fast friends. And when they passed away on the same day, the last words of one of them was, The country is safe. Jefferson still lives. And the last words of the other was, John Adams will see that things go forward. — Harry S. Truman

The modern Presidents Club was founded by two men who by all rights should have loathed each other. There was Harry Truman, the humble haberdasher from Missouri, hurled into office in the spring of 1945, summoning to the White House Herbert Hoover, a failed Republican president who had left town thirteen years earlier as the most hated man in America, his motorcades pelted with rotten fruit. They were political enemies and temperamental opposites. Where Truman was authentic, amiable, if prone to eruptions of temper, Hoover could be cold, humorless, incapable of small talk but ferociously sure of the rightness of his cause. — Nancy Gibbs

Dialogue is the basis of Indian culture, and we don't want to make any enemies. Political and ideological adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies. — Evo Morales

Religious fanaticism is not the only clear and present danger in our world. The greatest dangers confronting human kind are still those ancient enemies of war, poverty, ignorance and disease. These create the breeding grounds in which religious extremism flourishes, because people who have been betrayed by the world's political and economic systems often seek refuge in the alternatives offered by religion.

It is often said that the most dangerous person in the world is the person with nothing to lose. The more people in our world who have nothing to lose, the greater the danger of extremism is likely to become. If we are committed to struggling against religious fanaticism, and if we really do stand in awe of human potential, then we need to cultivate a much more intelligent debate about the role religion plays in nurturing that human potential through its shaping of ideas and through the hope and meaning it gives to many millions of lives. — Tina Beattie

The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they've shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative. — P. J. O'Rourke

The police state We now have well over 100,000 domestic federal law enforcement agents armed and ready to enforce the laws to "make everyone safe and secure." We also have our TSA "friends" at the airports protecting us with an army of over 50,000 bureaucrats. The Department of Homeland Security has more than 240,000 employees. The FBI has about 35,000 employees. Around 90,000 IRS employees enforce draconian tax laws that limit self-sufficiency, put people in fear, and are used as a political tool to help suppress dissenters to the empire. There are many thousands of others "making sure we're safe and secure from our foreign enemies" while our domestic enemies, including politicians, bureaucrats, and government profiteers, are ignored. — Ron Paul

It would be easy, but misleading, to see the rise of terrorism expertise as simply a response to an increase in political violence. This simplistic empirical approach neglects the reflexive relationship between experts and their objects of knowledge. Others have suggested that we view terrorism expertise as a product of political propaganda by governments seeking to demonize their enemies and draw attention away from their own use of violence. But this "critical" approach (see, for example, Chomsky 2001; Herman and O'Sullivan 1989), which argues that terrorism experts constitute an "industry," funded and organized by the state and other elite interests, neglects the agency and interests of the experts themselves, and the ways in which these interests may either harmonize or clash with those of the state, the media, and the "terrorists" themselves. — Lisa Stampnitzky

As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in the name of defending us against subversion. — Murray Kempton

us?" Hal's analytical brain was working hard. "It can't be a personal grudge. You get along with everybody. You haven't any personal enemies. It can't be political - you don't mix in politics. There are lots of revolutionaries in these Latin American countries with axes to grind, but you've never had anything to do with that sort of thing. So it must be economic." "What — Willard Price

Here, I am looking for a document issued by a public attorney. I don't find. He is accused by the political leaders of the coalition, by his enemies, who said that he is guilty. That he deserves to be killed. — Jacques Verges

There are reports that leaders from ISIS and al-Qaida met at a farm house in Syria last week, and agreed to work together against their common enemies. That story again: Two radical terrorist groups managed to do what two American political parties cannot. — Jimmy Fallon

The duty of Republicans in the current crisis, he told them, was "simply that of magnanimity. We have learned, heretofore, the practice of patience under political defeat. It now remains to show the greater virtue of moderation in triumph." Americans of different parties, he said, "are not, never can be, never must be, enemies, or even adversaries. We are all fellow-citizens, Americans, brethren."3 — Walter Stahr

The defense of the Western Canon is in no way a defense of the West or a nationalist enterprise ... The greatest enemies of aesthetic and cognitive standards are purported defenders who blather to us about moral and political values in literature. We do not live by the ethics of the Iliad, or by the politics of Plato. Those who teach interpretation have more in common with the Sophists than with Socrates. What can we expect Shakespeare to do for our semiruined society, since the function of Shakespearean drama has so little to do with civic virtue or social justice? — Harold Bloom

It is a different matter entirely to commit military resources to keep peace in such areas, where often no peace can be kept, or to build nations in our own image before they are ready for our freedoms - or even want them. The military need not do the work of sanctions and diplomacy. As we carry on in this new century, we would do well to remember the importance of balancing the twin goals of our foreign policy: preserving national security and promoting democratic principles. And we must remember that historic conflicts between enemies can be won on moral force, without firing a single bullet or missile; that cultural, market, political, and perhaps religious forces can be far more transformative in areas of the world where chaos and violence reign; and that America can contribute to the building of nations by any and all of these means - while preserving our military and reserving our sovereign right to wage war to maintain true peace. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

Everyone talks about religious liberty, but no one believes it. So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God. — Gary North

And in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?" exclaimed Dr. Leete. "Are they France, England Germany or hunger, cold and nakedness? — Edward Bellamy

To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim — Thomas Paine

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting. — Henry Adams

Capitalist exploitation and cartels and monopolies are the enemies of underdeveloped countries. On the other hand a regime which is completely oriented towards the people as a whole and based on the principle that man is the most precious of all possessions, will allow us to go forward more quickly and more harmoniously, and thus make impossible that caricature of society where all economic and political power is held in the hands of a few who regard the nation as a whole with scorn and contempt. — Frantz Fanon

Especially when it came to his triumphant denunciations of his political enemies, each of whom, she suspected, were only too relieved that it was him rather than they who had been caught. She — Alexander McCall Smith

All political movements are like this
we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. — Doris Lessing

This sentiment has very simple characteristics, such as worship of a being supposed superior, fear of the power with which the being is credited, blind submission to its commands, inability to discuss its dogmas, the desire to spread them, and a tendency to consider as enemies all by whom they are not accepted. Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious. — Gustave Le Bon

It is a strange story, the story of Jesus. To the Jews, it is not the story of Israel's redemption but some odd detour. For Christians, though, the story of Jesus is the final chapter of the story of Israel. For Christians, all that Israel hopes for - redemption from enemies, forgiveness of sins, triumph and exaltation, a restoration of Eden, the conversion of the nations, the earth filled with the glory of Israel's God - all of it comes to pass through Jesus. Not through the sword of Zealots, or the rigid purity of the Pharisees, or the political compromises of the Sadducees, or the withdrawal of the Essenes. Israel's story is carried to its conclusion by a different sort of Jew entirely, a different sort of holiness, a different story-line, a story-line of compassion, service, suffering, death. And, over all and transforming all, resurrection. For Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed. — Peter J. Leithart

Many historians have noted an interesting phenomenon in American life in the years immediately after a war. In the councils of government fierce partisanship replaces the necessary political coalitions of wartime. IN the great arena of social relations -- business, labour, the community -- violence rises, fear and recrimination dominate public discussion, passion prevails over reason. Many historians have noted this phenomenon. It is attributed to the continuance beyond the end of the war of the war hysteria. Unfortunately, the necessary emotional fever for fighting a war cannot be turned off like a water tap. Enemies must continue to be found. The mind and heart cannot be demobilised as quickly as the platoon. On the contrary, like a fiery furnace at white heat, it takes a considerable time to cool. — E.L. Doctorow

It is something radically different from them all. They are out for battle and extol violence; liberalism, on the contrary, desires peace and the ascendancy of ideas. It is for this reason that all parties, however badly disunited they may otherwise be, form a united front against liberalism.
The enemies of liberalism have branded it as the party of the special interests of the capitalists. This is characteristic of their mentality. They simply cannot understand a political ideology as anything but the advocacy of certain special privileges opposed to the general welfare.
One cannot look on liberalism as a party of special interests, privileges, and prerogatives, because private ownership of the means of production is not a privilege redounding to the exclusive advantage of the capitalists, but an institution in the interest of the whole of society and consequently an institution that benefits everyone. — Ludwig Von Mises