Political Action Quotes

• Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past - let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  4th Of July, Politics Today, Answers

  Speech at Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland, on February 18, 1958. "John F. Kennedy Quotations: Profiles in Courage Quotations", www.jfklibrary.org.

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

  John F. Kennedy

  Responsibility, Political, Citizens

  28 Copy quote

• Voting is the foundation stone for political action.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Political, Voting, Foundation

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1968). “I Have a Dream: The Quotations of Martin Luther King, Jr”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a weapon we can fight with. That is the weapon of political action.

  Harry Bridges

  Fighting, Political, Weapons

  19 Copy quote

• Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Mean, Responsibility, Political

  13 Copy quote

• One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.

  Paulo Freire

  Educational, Views, People

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.68, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only armchair politicians are immune from committing mistakes. Errors are inherent in political action.

  Nelson Mandela

  Inspiring, Mistake, Errors

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Conversations With Myself”, p.49, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another.

  Malcolm X

  Political, Way, Action

  Interview with Robert Penn Warren, whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu. June 2, 1964.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• All of us can make changes, but the changes that are most needed are not light bulbs and windows but laws and policies and treaties. So, yes, we are in a phase of this (climate protection) struggle where civic and political action is at the top of the list.

  Al Gore

  Struggle, Light, Law

  4 Copy quote

• If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action.

  Ulrike Meinhof

  Fire, Car, Political

  37 Copy quote

• I don't care much about the outcome. I'd like for people to feel better and have better lives, but I don't think that's in the cards through political action. I think bloodshed is still the way you get dramatic change. That'll never happen because they've got all the guns now. At least they've got the nice guns, the big ones, the ones with night vision.

  George Carlin

  Nice, Feel Better, Gun

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

  Ron Paul

  Political, Peaceful, Necessary Change

  6 Copy quote

• I'm interested in the way that the language of labor has been suppressed in our culture, the way it has disappeared from our vocabulary and is never heard on stage. . . . I'm better at writing than I am at organizing [political action]. SLAUGHTER CITY is my small contribution. If it gives people a voice it is worth something. So often we forget what we are no longer hearing.

  Naomi Wallace

  Writing, Vocabulary, Cities

  5 Copy quote

• The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Independent, Political, Gold

  Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “On the Manipulation of Money and Credit”, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. : Free Market Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• When these political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government.

  Bob Dole

  Government, Giving, Political

  10 Copy quote

• Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.

  Grover Cleveland

  Government, Offending, People

  Grover Cleveland, United States. President (1885-1889 : Cleveland), United States. President (1893-1897 : Cleveland) (1968). “Grover Cleveland, 1837-1908: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.

  Leo Strauss

  Political, Wish, Action

  Leo Strauss (1959). “What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies”, p.10, University of Chicago Press

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you begin by saying, 'Thou shalt not lie,' there is no longer any possibility of political action.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Lying, Political, Politics

  6 Copy quote

• When the goal of political action is no longer the defense of liberty, no word other than demagoguery can describe the despicable nature of politics.

  Ron Paul

  Goal, Political, Liberty

  26 Copy quote

• Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion.

  Daniel Dennett

  Morning, Fun, Heart

  Daniel C. Dennett (2007). “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”, p.294, Penguin UK

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?

  John Dewey

  Mean, Opportunity, Political

  4 Copy quote

• Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.

  Michael Joseph Oakeshott

  Support, Political, Purpose

  12 Copy quote

• Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

  Honore de Balzac

  Power, Political, Principles

  8 Copy quote

• Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

  Michel Foucault

  Practice, Political, Use

  6 Copy quote

• Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.

  Paul Krugman

  Class, Political, Action

  Paul Krugman (2015). “The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming America From The Right”, p.25, Penguin UK

  41 Copy quote

  Show source