Modern Politics Quotes

• In modern politics, even the leader of the free world needs help from the sultan of Facebookistan.

  Rebecca MacKinnon

  Leader, Needs, World

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• The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Honesty, Integrity, Philosophy

  "Stop the Madness". "The Globe and Mail" Newspaper, July 6, 2002.

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• American politics is a struggle, not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power houses.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Years

  Henry Adams (1946). “The Education of Henry Adams”

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• Modern politics has become little more than shirking responsibility and blaming somebody else.

  Ross Perot

  Responsibility, Littles, Blame

  Ross Perot (1992). “United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Our Country”

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• Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Years

  Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Adams (2016). “Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams”, p.1701, Open Road Media

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• I'm afraid that's in the nature of modern politics - it's as much conducted by abuse as argument.

  Tony Blair

  Abuse, Argument, Modern

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• One of the things that really has gone wrong in modern politics, one of the things that made Trump possible was that many people have a view of politics as something dramatic and exciting and thrilling and emotional.

  David Frum

  Emotional, Views, People

  Source: www.cbc.ca

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• But I think it's quite clear in my work that my orientation isn't political or doesn't come out of modern politics.

  Jane Campion

  Thinking, Political, Modern

  Jane Campion, Virginia Wright Wexman (1999). “Jane Campion: Interviews”, p.15, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• [Radical leftist] are never been a majority. We just fell for one of the greatest illusions in modern politics.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Majority, Illusion, Modern

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Rejection, Systematic, Conservative

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.295, A&C Black

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• There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice.

  Stephen Mansfield

  Religious, Leader, Principles

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• So much of modern politics is focused not on honest differences of policy but on personal attacks.

  William J. Clinton

  Differences, Honest, Modern

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• The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Women, Window Panes, Broken

  Quoted in George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1936)

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• Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Modern

  The Education of Henry Adams ch. 28 (1907)

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• Contemporary political theorists continue this type of thinking about democracy by arguing that the development of "public judgment" among regular citizens should be made the central concern of modern politics. Public judgment, in the words of Benjamin Barber, is a function of commonality that can be exercised only by citizens interacting with one another in the context of mutual deliberation and decision.

  Kevin Mattson

  Thinking, Decision, Political

  Kevin Mattson (1994). “Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era”, p.4, Penn State Press

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• I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Religious, Antiques, Superstitions

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics.

  Charlie Pierce

  Men, Modern, He Man

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• Modern politics today requires a mastery of television. I've never really warmed up to television and, in fairness to television, it's never warmed up to me.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Political, Style, Mastery

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• It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.

  Matthew Arnold

  Inward, Genius, Done

  1867 'On the Study of Celtic Literature'

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• What this brings out is that modern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  War, Mean, Matter

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.294, A&C Black

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• Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  War, Mean, Politics

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.294, A&C Black

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