Political Power Quotes - Page 4

• Democracy, taken in its narrower, purely political, sense, suffers from the fact that those in economic and political power possess the means for molding public opinion to serve their own class interests. The democratic form of government in itself does not automatically solve problems; it offers, however, a useful framework for their solution. Everything depends ultimately on the political and moral qualities of the citizenry.

  Albert Einstein

  Taken, Mean, Class

  Albert Einstein (2017). “Einstein on Peace”, p.731, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• It would be catastrophic if one day these fundamentalists Christians gain enough political power to enforce their literal understanding of Mosaic Law.

  Mel White

  Christian, Law, Political

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• If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality.

  Tibor R. Machan

  Equality, Order, Law

  Tibor R. Machan (1995). “Private Rights and Public Illusions”, p.81, Transaction Publishers

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• An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure; a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.

  Aravind Adiga

  Effectiveness, Political, India

  "Indians' worst fear: the honest politician" by Aravind Adiga, www.theguardian.com. July 30, 2008.

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• I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon, at first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details.

  Joseph Beuys

  Art, Thinking, Political

  "The Role of Documentation in Conceptual Art: : An Aesthetic Inquiry". Book by Robert C. Morgan, 1978.

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• Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.

  Robert Caro

  Political, Journalism, Reason

  "The Round Table: Fiction, Biography And The Use Of Power". Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, www.robertcaro.com. 1999.

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• Unequal access to money and media plus bias, external and internalized, and male-dominant religions and illegality at the polls - all those are reasons for women's wildly unequal political power.

  Gloria Steinem

  Media, Political, Males

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Political power goes much deeper than one suspects; there are centres and invisible, little-known points of support; its true resistance, its true solidity is perhaps where one doesn't expect it.

  Michel Foucault

  Political, Support, Littles

  Source: www.nicklewis.org

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• Around the world, we see the results of exploitation which destroys much without taking future generations into account. Protecting the world's forests; stemming desertification and erosion; avoiding the spread of toxic substances harmful to man, animals and plants; protecting the atmosphere; all these can be accomplished only through active and wise cooperation, without borders or political power plays.

  Pope John Paul II

  Wise, Men, Animal

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• The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el destierro y el exilo fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados - we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Land, Roots, White

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• For a political movement to not understand that sexuality is a profound component of both how people are oppressed and how people dream, is not to recognize the reality of political power and where it's centered.

  Amber Hollibaugh

  Dream, Reality, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• [The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Military, Distance, Moving

  "Conflict and Defense: A General Theory". Book by Kenneth E. Boulding, p. 245, 1962.

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• America, like Britain before her, is now the great defender of the Status Quo. She has committed herself against revolution and radical change in the underdeveloped world because independent governments would destroy the world economic and political system, which assures the United States its disproportionate share of economic and political power ... America's preeminent wealth depends upon keeping things in the underdeveloped world much as they are, allowing change and modernization to proceed only in a controlled, orderly, and nonthreatening way.

  Richard Barnet

  Independent, America, Government

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• The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.

  Plato

  Real, Race, Cities

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• Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, "I'm New Here," doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.

  Will Hermes

  Song, Fighting, Issues

  "A Surprising Record From Gil Scott Heron". "All Things Considered" with Melissa Block and Michele Norris, www.npr.org. February 11, 2010.

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• We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

  Fred Hampton

  Running, Fighting, Pigs

  "Power Anywhere Where There's People". Fred Hampton's speech at Olivet Church, www.historyisaweapon.com. 1969.

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• We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power. … But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed).

  Matthew Crawford

  Political, Damage, West

  Matthew B. Crawford (2009). “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work”, p.146, Penguin

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• Enforced by genetics, sexual reproduction, perspective, and experience, the most manifest characteristic of human beings is their diversity. The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions- all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

  George Gilder

  Government, Order, Top Down

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• To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

  John Locke

  Men, Thinking, Order

  John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.189

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• Institutions of knowledge, of foresight and care, such as medicine, help to support the political power. It's also obvious, even to the point of scandal, in certain cases related to psychiatry.

  Michel Foucault

  Medicine, Support, Political

  Source: www.nicklewis.org

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• The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number into one heap will govern the rest... In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy.

  James Fitzjames Stephen

  Cutting, Men, Numbers

  James Fitzjames Stephen (1873). “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, p.240

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• [S]tatism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, War, Fighting

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• Investment that only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power cannot contribute toward égalité and justice - the foundation stones for a sound democracy.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Justice, Political, Democracy

  "'Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours'" by Aung San Suu Kyi, www.nytimes.com. June 16, 2012.

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• There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.

  Howard Zinn

  War, Liars, School

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.687, Routledge

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• I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).

  Jacques Ellul

  Kings, Teaching, Biblical

  "The Subversion of Christianity" by Jacques Ellul, translated by G. Bromiley, (p. 116), 1986.

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