Political Short Quotes & Sayings

Globalization is a reality. And this makes most leaders today realize that populist illusions can't be sustained before they collapse into stagnation and leave their political supporters deeply disillusioned. You can't inflate away your troubles or allow mountains of debt to build up if, as a country, you have to make your living in a globally competitive environment ... Building prosperity requires caution and patience. It requires time. Populism is a short cut that doesn't work. — Fernando Henrique Cardoso

A basic conflict is thus arising over Europe between the interests of Atlantic sea-power, which demand the preservation of vigorous and independent political life on the European peninsula, and the interests of the jealous Eurasian land power, which must always seek to extend itself to the west and will never find a place, short of the Atlantic Ocean, where it can from its own standpoint safely stop. — Henry Kissinger

Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria. — Eric Alterman

You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political. — Vaclav Havel

I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth
that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence
for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage. — Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman's industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman. — Wyndham Lewis

To attempt to commit the Church to social and political programs may be a short cut . to escape from the more difficult and costly responsibility of submitting ourselves to those deeper changes of disposition and outlook which are in the end a much more powerful revolutionary force. — J. H. Oldham

I am not against identity politics or single based issues; at the same time, we need to find ways to connect these singular modes of politics to broader political narratives about democracy so we can recognize their strengths and limitations in building broad-based social movements. In short, we need to find new ways to connect education to the struggle for democracy that is under assault in ways that were unimaginable forty years ago. — Henry Giroux

A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist. — Ronald Reagan

President Obama stands ready to work with everyone, because that's what the American people expect and deserve - not for the short term political advantages, but the long term health of our country. We don't spend time trying to figure out what's in the minds of Republicans, we try to keep our focus on the American people. — Valerie Jarrett

The problem for free-market economists is that their policy recommendations at the dawn of a recession are not too sexy to the political mindset. They involve either doing nothing to hinder price adjustments, or actively removing extra-market barriers to price adjustments. This often involves short-term pain in exchange for long-term solutions, when politics rewards short-term solutions that result in long-term pain. — Christopher Westley

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable. — Christopher Hitchens

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done ... Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs. — Theodore Roosevelt

Racism is not about hurtful words, bruised feelings, political correctness, or refusing to call short people 'vertically challenged.' Racism is about the power to treat entire groups of people as something less than human - for the benefit of that power. That's why a Native American sports mascot is far from harmless. — Dave Zirin

[P]olitical freedom can easily provide the legal frame for economic slavery, with the underprivileged 'freely' selling themselves into servitude. We are thus brought to demand more than just political democracy: we need democratization of social and economic life. In short, we have to admit that what we first took as the failure fully to realize the noble principle of democratic freedom is a failure inherent to this principle itself. Learning how the distortion of a notion, its incomplete realization, is grounded in the distortion immanent to this notion is a big step in political education. — Slavoj Zizek

decision-making. Far from placing the nation and the world at risk to protect his own reputation for toughness, he probably would have backed down, in public if necessary, whatever the domestic political damage might have been. There may be, in short, room here for a new profile in courage - but it would be courage of a different kind from what many people presumed that term to mean throughout much of the Cold War.7 — Robert F. Kennedy

To sum up what is most crucial in Japanese political culture: the Japanese have never been encouraged to think that the force of an idea could measure up to the physical forces of a government. The key to understanding Japanese power relations is that they are unregulated by transcendental concepts. The public has no intellectual means to a consistent judgement of the political aspects of life. The weaker, ideologically inspired political groups or individuals have no leverage of any kind over the status quo other than the little material pressure they are sometimes able to muster. In short, Japanese political practice is a matter of 'might is right' disguised by assurances and tokens of 'benevolence'. — Karel Van Wolferen

If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment. — Kurt Andersen

The pursuit of health is a symptom of unhealth. When this pursuit is no longer a personal yearning but part of state ideology, healthism for short, it becomes a symptom of political sickness. — Petr Skrabanek

Political correctness is a concept invented by hard-rightwing forces to defend their right to be racist, to treat women in a degrading way and to be truly vile about gay people. They invent this idea of people who are politically correct, with a rigid, monstrous attitude to life so they can attack. But we have all had to learn to modify our language. That's all part of being a decent human being. — Clare Short

We have the leading companies and the leading sectors in the advanced industrial world, we have an incredibly dynamic society, and we have high levels of entrepreneurship. And we have the best universities in the world ... We also have impeccable credit. What we don't have is a political system that can take the simple measures to deal with our short-term deficit. — Fareed Zakaria

Our political solar system, in short, has been characterized not by two equally competing suns, but by a sun and a moon. It is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period arc fought out; while the minority party shines in reflected radiance of the beat thus generated .... Each time one majority sun sets and a new sun arises, the drama of American politics is transformed. Figuratively and literally a new political era begins. For each new majority party brings its own orbit of conflict, its own peculiar rhythm of ethnic antagonisms, its own economic equilibrium, its own sectional balance. — Samuel Lubell

Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, peoples love for truth, justice, freedom, and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail. — Dalai Lama

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well.

The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes. — Barry Glassner

We cannot shun our values as an immigrant nation. This is a wrong path. And while possibly it is a short-term political victory based on division and based on creating a wedge issue that splits people in this country, it is a long-term defeat for this Nation. — Raul Grijalva

No Socialist system can be established without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism or voting Socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them. No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. — Winston S. Churchill

And if the liberal media and political community cannot accept that sometimes the wrong people get killed in war, then I can only suggest they first grow up and then serve a short stint up in the Hindu Kush. — Marcus Luttrell

That feeds anger, and I mean when we went and at last thank heavens got towards peace in Northern Ireland we went for justice within Northern Ireland as well as using security well, as well as a political settlement, but surely that is the lesson. — Clare Short

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever. — Cynthia Ozick

I read and learned and fretted more about Canada after I left than I ever did while I was home. I absorbed anything I could on topics that ranged from Folklore to history to political mainifestos ... I ranted and raved and seethed about things beyond my control. In short I acted like a Canadian. — Will Ferguson

The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out - at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Wars are motivated by the need to seize the wealth of our neighbours, to wield power, to protect ourselves from real or imagined threats: in short they have, as we have seen, political, social, economic or demographic causes. There is no need to refer to Islam or the clash of civilizations to explain why the Afghans or the Iraqis resist the western military forces occupying their countries. Nor to speak of anti-Jewish sentiment or anti-Semitism to understand the reasons why the Palestinians are not overjoyed by the Israeli occupation of their lands. — Tzvetan Todorov

I think the Democrats are going to have to be willing to give up, maybe, some short-term political gain by whipping up fears on some of these things - if it's a reasonable Social Security proposal, a reasonable Medicare proposal. We've got to deal with these things. You cannot have health care devour the economy. — William J. Clinton

I didn't work for Jimmy Carter all those years to go to cocktail parties. I was there as a political adviser, a short-order cook, to work on topical matters. — Hamilton Jordan

Leading Muslim clerics (the ulema) have come to the consensus that Islam is more than a mere religion, but rather the one and only comprehensive system that embraces, explains, integrates, and dictates all aspects of human life: personal, cultural, political, as well as religious. In short, Islam handles everything. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I fought for years to free myself of all my cultural, economic and political chains, to be free of owning or being owned. I refused. God, how hard it is to refuse sometimes. Especially during times of hardship, refusal requires willpower. And each refusal expands the boundaries of one's loneliness. You know how it goes," I said, running out of breath. "I did not belong to my town. I had no regular city or country address, no regular job, no steady lover, husband, child or family. I was infinitely independent and unfettered. I was hungry but free. — Buket Uzuner

Speculation is a fool's game, but I've seen many political projections that look like the Taliban could hold most of the country, and possibly Kabul, within perhaps a short time. — Eliza Griswold

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate. — Edmund Burke

Emma's mid-twenties had brought a second adolescence even more self-absorbed and doom-laden than the first one. 'Why don't you just come home, sweetheart?' her mum had said on the phone last night, using her quavering, concerned voice, as if her daughter had been abducted. 'Your room's still here. There's jobs at Debenhams' - and for the first time she had been tempted.
Once, she thought she could conquer London. She had imagined a whirl of literary salons, political engagement, larky parties, bittersweet romances conducted on Thames embankments. She had intended to form a band, make short films, write novels, but two years on slim volume of verse was no fatter, and nothing really good had happened to her since she'd been baton-charged at Poll Tax Riots. — David Nicholls

The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity. — Julius Evola

The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns. — Ben Bernanke

History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end ... the US will probably maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. — Chalmers Johnson

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through. — Emma Goldman

A foreigner is an individual who is considered either comic or sinister. When the victim of a disaster - preferably natural but sometimes political -the foreigner may also be pitied from a distance for a short period of time. — John Ralston Saul

His hand gently caressed my leg as his lips nibbled on mine, and the tip of his tongue began asking permission, teasing me with short licks of my tongue that suggested so much more. I could feel myself breathing more heavily, until he slowly pulled away. "We still have a film to watch," he whispered with a wink, before settling back into his seat. — Zack Love

Sure, tactically and in the short term, we'll do all right, but in the long term, these types of policies always fail, and you know why, because there will come a time that we need the same American public - that we kept everything hidden from - to support the policy either with their blood or money. — J.W. Amran

Many of today's world leaders have great courage: the courage to do harm. The are ill-advised, too clever, or too skillful. I think bad political systems, by which I mean systems that are not founded on a desire for justice, are mainly due to a type of short-sightedness. When politicians see things only in the short term, they inevitably only see the short-term gains. That is how they develop the type of courage that is necessary to harm others. — Dalai Lama XIV

I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward. — Mark McKinnon

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence
on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match. — John F. Kennedy

So many problems we will get to the bottom of later, but whose spatial aspect we must grasp right away. If the space of the industrial economy dominates the social space in which the Parisian worker or intellectual develops, to what extent could residential space, cultural space, or political space be planned without it being necessary to first intervene in economic structures? ... In short ... : to what extent can we freely build the framework for a social life in which we might be guided by our aspirations and not by our instincts? — Tom McDonough

Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events. — Saul Alinsky

Political order, in short, requires cultural unity, something that politics itself can never provide. — Roger Scruton

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy. — Allan Bloom

Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction. Anyone who has read a novel by Charles Dickens knows that the liberal regimes of nineteenth-century Europe gave priority to individual freedom even if it meant throwing insolvent poor families in prison and giving orphans little choice but to join schools for pickpockets. Anyone who has read a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of daily life. — Yuval Noah Harari

Cameras are dangerous. With no waiting period or background check, any whack-job could just stroll into a Wal-Mart and walk out with a semi-automatic. Now, for years I've been pressing for stricter regulations on cameras, especially around our elected officials. Too many political lives have been cut short by some crazed shooter. — Stephen Colbert

In short, the Lord's Supper was the realization of new social and political arrangements, the embodiment of the social leveling seen in Jesus' ministry, most profoundly in his acts of table fellowship. Importantly, as we have seen, these new social arrangements could only be achieved if the emotions of social stratification were confronted, eliminated, or reinterpreted. In his body metaphor, Paul dramatically reframes these heretical emotions, the emotions of contempt, disgust, honor, and social presentability. Rather, than signaling exclusion and division - the natural expulsive impulse inherent in these emotions - Paul suggests that these emotions should signal just the opposite in the Kingdom of God: honor, care, and embrace. — Richard Beck

I've found him to be a disappointment. Wonderful speech in Egypt, and good intentions aside, foreign policy needs to be firmly grounded in reality, and understanding of a sort of chaos theory ... [that is to say] it needs to be part good intention, part political intelligence, and part political savvy and knowledge of international interests and national burdens. President Obama has been extremely short-sighted in this sense, and if he fails, it will be a tragic blow for peaceniks and multilateralists the world over, and a manna from heaven for the Republican party. — Munir Butt

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short. — Arthur Schopenhauer

This falling-out was to be more than personal, for the rift between Hamilton and Madison precipitated the start of the two-party system in America. The funding debate shattered the short-lived political consensus that had ushered in the new government. For the next five years, the political spectrum in America was defined by whether people endorsed or opposed Alexander Hamilton's programs. — Ron Chernow

The problem is going to be finding the right words and implementing it in a way that is really dealing with people that are inciting and not preventing honest discussion of the underlying causes of this horrendous political situation the world is in now. — Clare Short

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. — Theodore Roosevelt

The meeting [in San Antonio of the National Women's Political Caucus] featured a cattle show at which a herd of Democratic candidates- Glenn, Cranston, Mondale, Hart, and Hollings- pantingly pantomined their fidelity to feminism, stopping just short of a pledge to use nuclear weapons against any states that omit to ratify the Equal Right Amendment. — Daniel Seligman

In short, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, so long as the goose does not die before the next election and no one traces the politicians' fingerprints on the murder weapon. — Thomas Sowell

The Kalergi Plan In short, Kalergi is still held in very high, near mythical esteem and the policy of the Kalergi Plan was and still is the basis of official European Union government policy aimed at Cultural, Political and Genetic genocide of the Peoples of Europe, through a full implementation of all seven stages of the Multicultural concept. — Citizen One

In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments. — Douglas MacArthur

Judicial activists are nothing short of radicals in robes
contemptuous of the rule of law, subverting the Constitution at will, and using their public trust to impose their policy preferences on society. In fact, no radical political movement has been more effective in undermining our system of government than the judiciary. And with each Supreme Court term, we hold our collective breath hoping the justices will do no further damage, knowing full well they will disappoint. Such is the nature of judicial tyranny. — Mark R. Levin

Discussions of sustainability as a political process have been taken up by a number of the social sciences centred on questions of power and outcomes for particular groups of people, across space and time. In short, this work raises sustainable development as a moral concept that seeks to define a 'fair and just' development (Starkey and Walford, 2001). The notion of 'environmental justice' is now a prominent part of contemporary discussions of the meaning and practice of sustainable development (see — Jennifer A. Elliott

I made the mistake of writing something very, very short about Obama for this website that I write fiction for, and my father told me never do that again. And he was right. I have nothing to add to a political conversation because it's not my area. — Jesse Eisenberg

I think the best thing about my short-lived political career was that I saw the interiors of Bihar and UP. That is the real India, and, being an Indian, it was really sad to see our own people living in such dismal conditions. It was a real eye-opener. — Sanjay Dutt

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick - professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans. — Ronald Reagan

My goal is to achieve a little less injustice in Uruguay, to help the most vulnerable and to leave behind a political way of thinking, a way of looking at the future that will be passed on and used to move forward. There's nothing short-term, no victory around the corner. I will not achieve paradise or anything like that. What I want is to fight for the common good to progress. Life slips by. The way to prolong it is for others to continue your work. — Jose Mujica

The fundamental problem is that every technology embeds the ideologies of its creators! Who made the Internet? The military! The Internet is the product of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency! We call it DARPA for short! Who worked for DARPA? DARPA was a bunch of men! Not a single woman worked on the underlying technologies that fuel our digital universe! Men are the shit of the world and all of our political systems and philosophies were created and devised without the input of women! Half of the world's population lives beneath systems of government and technological innovation into which their gender had zero input! Democracy is a bullshit ideology that a bunch of slaveholding Greek men constructed between rounds of beating their wives! All the presumed ideologies of men were taken for inescapable actualities and designed into the Internet! Packet switching is an incredible evil! — Jarett Kobek

An annual or frequent choice of Magistrates, who in a year, or in a few years, are again left upon a level with their neighbors, is most likely to prevent usurpation and tyranny ... If rulers know that they shall in short period of time, be again out of power, and ... may be liable to be called to account for misconduct, it will guard them against maladministration. — Clinton Rossiter

Let us hear the dangers of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness-and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man! — John Adams

Democracies are expense-averse and they think in terms of short-term, political interests rather than a long-term interest in stability. — Samantha Power

The most frequent fallacy by far today, the fallacy that emerges again and again in nearly every conversation that touches on economic affairs, the error of a thousand political speeches, the central sophism of the "new" economics, is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole. — Henry Hazlitt

Commitment and family were important decisions, but so were matters of t
he heart. [Monique] might not know much about politics, but she knew she couldn't command her heart to love. And she'd never be pressured into giving herself to Eero, not to appease her family or to strengthen her brother's political position. She'd seen all she cared to of him and his power in the short week that he pursued her and that night he'd tried to bind their powers without her consent. — Constance Phillips

For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic. — Alexander McCall Smith

Next Monday the Convention in Virginia will assemble; we have still good hopes of its adoption here: though by no great plurality of votes. South Carolina has probably decided favourably before this time. The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come. — George Washington

When was the last time you heard an insightful, inspiring piece of oratory from an Australian political leader, an appeal to what is pure and true within humanity: a statement of belief backed by ideas for change betterment, a call to those immutable values wherein lie the potential greatness of people individually and collectively? Such exhortation, such leadership is lamentably scarce. — Michael Short

In ancient times, bodily strength and dexterity, being of greater use and importance in war, was also much more esteemed and valued, than at present ... In short, the different ranks of men are, in a great measure, regulated by riches. — David Hume

Let [the Constitution] be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges, let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. — Abraham Lincoln

If we don't like rent control, we ought to oppose it on political and social grounds - and not just by arguing that, thanks to smartphones and social networks, we can create new, more efficient markets for matching short-term renters with tenants. — Evgeny Morozov

You're the one with almost an MBA," Barry, the short balding one, said to Lash. "You should know what to do." "They don't cover what to do with a dead hooker," Lash countered. "That's a whole different program. Political science, I think." Despite — Christopher Moore

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. — Paul Krugman

Without the participation of one fifth of the global population, without the endorsement of the world's second-largest economy, without the political will and security guarantee of this emerging power, international institutions and norms will be irrelevant and the legitimacy and credibility of their resolutions and arrangements will fall short of promise. — Wang Yizhou

Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its art, its key institutions - rearranges itself. We are currently living through such a time. — Peter Drucker

Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium. — John B. S. Haldane

The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy. — John Jay Chapman

Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress. — Bill Gates

Being resolute today means to act within the framework of political and social pluralism and the rule of law to provide conditions for continued reform and prevent a breakdown of the state and economic collapse, prevent the elements of chaos from becoming catastrophic.
All this requires taking certain tactical steps, to search for various ways of addressing both short- and long-term tasks. Such efforts and political and economic steps, agreements based on reasonable compromise, are there for everyone to see. — Mikhail Gorbachev

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan

The very best Labor governments in our nation's history distinguished themselves by thinking big and, wherever possible, resisting the temptation to overemphasise short-term political considerations. — Anthony Albanese

Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable. — Barbara Jordan

The space between the private and the public is the nexus of the personal and the social, if not political. It's where we meet the strong or subtle cultural censors who attempt to define what community, race, class, or gender can or cannot speak, to tell us which stories are told and valued and which are not. In short, it's where we're reminded of the power of personal stories and the power of the storyteller. — John Capecci And Timothy Cage

As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future. — Carl Sagan

The PBA was a symptom of the Philippines' basketball obsession, not the cause. I was thrilled to be witnessing the professional game from inside Alaska's locker room, but that wasn't what brought me to Manila in the first place. I was inspired by the idea that a Southeast Asian nation populated by five-foot-five men and mostly forgotten by America except for its political corruption, widespread prostitution, and violent Muslim separatist movement could be devoted to hoops with a passion unequaled by any other country. It was a nationwide tale of unrequited love. Forty million short men obsessed with basketball--they might as well have been a nation of blind art historians. — Rafe Bartholomew

There are only a handful of countries that have experienced what Indonesia has endured: financial crisis, political instability, separatism, ethnic conflicts, terrorism and natural disasters. Given the array of challenges that confronted us, what Indonesia has become today is nothing short of remarkable. Indonesia today is a country with a different Islam, democracy and modernity can go hand in hand. — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

In short, I do not believe the cynical liberal claim that the details of conservative political policies are just due to a self-serving ultrarich conspiracy, though the interests and finances of the ultrarich are certainly engaged. — George Lakoff