Political Power Quotes - Page 7

• The supremacy of Parliament and the embedding of property rights in Common Law put political power in the hands of men anxious to exploit the new economic opportunities and provided the framework for a judicial system to protect and encourage productive economic activity

  Douglass North

  Opportunity, Men, Rights

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• ...it was always our view that in order to attain this [proletarian revolution] and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew.

  Friedrich Engels

  Crush, Communication, Views

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Viktorovich Adoratskiĭ (1942). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected correspondence, 1846-1895”

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• A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power.

  Harry Browne

  Political, Benefits, Libertarian

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• A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy. (pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")

  Wendell Berry

  Spiritual, Racism, Community

  Wendell Berry (2010). “The Hidden Wound”, p.135, Counterpoint Press

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• Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

  Garrett Hardin

  Impact, Political, Environmental

  Garrett James Hardin (1982). “Naked emperors: essays of a taboo-stalker”, Course Technology Ptr

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• Ideas are very important to the shaping of society. In fact, they are more powerful than bombings or armies or guns. And this is because ideas are capable of spreading without limit. They are behind all the choices we make. They can transform the world in a way that governments and armies cannot. Fighting for liberty with ideas makes more sense to me than fighting with guns or politics or political power. With ideas, we can make real change that lasts.

  Ron Paul

  Powerful, Real, Army

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• Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers.

  Seneca the Younger

  Death, Freedom, Political

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• No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Organization, Choices

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.43, Penguin

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• If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Political, Lasts

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1034, GENERAL PRESS

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• In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

  Robert Caro

  Political, Choices, Democracy

  "Robert Caro: a life with LBJ and the pursuit of power". Interview with Chris McGreal, www.theguardian.com. June 9, 2012.

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• You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power.

  Karl Marx

  War, Struggle, Communication

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: collected works”

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• If I bring up political power, personal power, it sounds like they're my terms, and they're not.

  Barbara Kruger

  Political, Sound, Term

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• All political power, all power as such, is stupid. Don't rush after it, don't be ambitious, because all ambition collects dust and only dust. If you are not disillusioned by dust, you will not be able to know what truth is. A man obsessed with ambition is not capable of knowing truth at all. Eyes full of ambition never see what is; they only see what they want to see. The ambitious mind is the wrong mind; the non-ambitious mind is the right mind.

  Rajneesh

  Stupid, Ambition, Eye

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• By their subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have conferred on themselves the greatest of political blessings -- Gyges' ring of invisibility. And they have left the American people more deeply baffled by their own country's politics than any people on earth. Our public realm lies steeped in twilight, and we call that twilight news.'

  Walter Karp

  Country, Lying, Twilight

  Walter Karp (1992). “Buried alive: essays on our endangered republic”, Franklin Square Pr

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• Museums have no political power, but they do have the possibility of influencing the political process. This is a complete change from their role in the early days of collecting and hoarding the world to one of using the collections as an archive for a changing world. This role is not merely scientifically important, but it is also a cultural necessity.

  Richard Fortey

  Museums, Political, Important

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• I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny.

  Shadia Drury

  Wise, Book, Being Real

  "Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq". Interview with Danny Postel, www.opendemocracy.net. October 15, 2003.

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• You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

  Robert Caro

  Guy, Political, Use

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• Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?

  Walter E. Williams

  Powerful, Agency, Government

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• The Pashtuns feel discriminated against by the Americans because they supported the Taliban and the war is still going on in their region with continued U.S. bombing. They are also disgruntled at the overwhelming power of their ethnic rivals the Tajiks, who dominate the security forces in Kabul and control the key levers of political power. Although Karzai is a Pashtun also, many Pashtuns consider him a hostage to the Tajiks and Americans.

  Ahmed Rashid

  War, Keys, Political

  Source: progressive.org

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• From the starch-heavy 'food pyramid' to ethanol fuel, the government adopts programs not because they are right but because they gains votes, money or political power or solve problems that politics has already created, such as silos full of subsidized wheat or a shortage of gasoline due to the maze of controls on refining.

  Robert Prechter

  Government, Pyramids, Political

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• In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.

  William Graham Sumner

  Order, Political, England

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.123, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Ideas, Political

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• Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

  Isabel Paterson

  Educational, Octopus, Political

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• Our courts provide a neutral forum for the adjudication of disputes under the law, not based on economic or political power, on race, on sex or any other personal characteristics.

  Jon Kyl

  Sex, Race, Law

  Jon Kyl's opening statements at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2006.

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• I have a counter-theory...I believe men built most things because women were shut out of political power, job opportunities, and education for most of history, and instead forced into servitude towards men in the home. I believe my theory has a lot of evidence for it, in the form of all of history.

  Amanda Marcotte

  Jobs, Believe, Home

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