Political Systems Quotes - Page 9

• Impressed with a conviction that the due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good Government, I have considered the first arrangement of the Judicial department as essential to the happiness of our Country, and to the stability of its political system.

  George Washington

  Country, Government, Justice

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1852). “Life of Washington”, p.453

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• In the United States, the political system is a very marginal affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party.

  Noam Chomsky

  Party, Two, Political

  Interview with Adam Jones, adamjones.freeservers.com. February 20, 1990.

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• The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Political, Suffering, Imbeciles

  FaceBook post by Nassim Nicholas Taleb from May 17, 2013

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• The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.

  Ezra Klein

  Sacrifice, Political, Crisis

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• Political systems must love poverty-they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  New York, Years, People

  P. J. O'Rourke (2011). “Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics”, p.156, Pan Macmillan

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• The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

  Glenn Greenwald

  War, Years, Names

  "Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent". www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2013.

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• Failure is a big part of a free market's success. People fail to live up to their potential, or to carry out all their good intentions, in all kinds of economic and political systems. Capitalism makes them pay a price for their failures, while socialism, feudalism, fascism and other systems enable personal failures, especially by those at the top, to be ignored.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Political, Pay

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• Statism, which forces all of us within its orbit, is nothing but a political system of organized plunder, managed by every conceivable type of pressure group.

  Leonard Read

  Pressure Groups, Political, Orbit

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• We're clearly coming to the end of the fossil fuel era. We have the technology to shift to renewable energy, we have the will of the people. The only thing that's keeping us back is the fossil fuel industry's hold on our political system. That's what we need to change.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Technology, People, Political

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There's disgust with what people called a broken political system, and they're really angry at elites, whether it's the Republican establishment or particularly the media who they feel look down on them, tell them they're bigots.

  Mara Liasson

  Media, People, Broken

  Source: www.npr.org

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• It is one of the misfortunes of our political system that parties are formed more with reference to controversies that are gone by than to the controversies which these parties have actually to decide.

  Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

  Party, Political, Gone

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• Without a movement pressing for change, there's little hope. We've got to work the political system to make this happen fast. The physics and chemistry are daunting. The resources on the other side are very large.

  Bill McKibben

  Political, Movement, Littles

  Interview with Diane Silver, www.resilience.org. January 2009.

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• I also see an undercurrent - and perhaps the Indigo Children are another aspect of this â€" that's moving in the right direction that I thought was really predominant during the last 35 years since I started Noetics. So we do see quite a few people bucking the tides. At the moment, however, the political system, in my opinion, is going in the wrong direction.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Children, Moving, Years

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• Obviously, the duty of artists is there, but it's more an indictment of the political system that someone like Zinn views artists as the seers, idealizing them as the people responsible for inspiring change.

  Thom Yorke

  Artist, Views, People

  "Truth in the Hands of Artists". Interview with Sarah Burton, www.alternet.org. November 23, 2003.

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• As I travel around the world, it's fascinating; European leaders, Asian leaders, they all say to me, America is actually poised to be the world leader for another century - if we can fix some of this political dysfunction. ... We've got a lot of national security challenges, but if we get our economy together, and if we can get our political system to work well, I am really confident about our future.

  Barack Obama

  Dysfunction, America, Leader

  "OBAMA: 'We Are Not Going To Get A Deal' Without Raising Tax Rates". Interview with Julianna Goldman, www.businessinsider.com. December 4, 2012.

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• With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Political, World, Faults

  Eldridge Cleaver (2015). “Target Zero: A Life in Writing”, p.272, St. Martin's Press

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• I just didn't understand the American political system, and I felt really stupid about that.

  Drew Barrymore

  Stupid, Political, Felt

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• How could such a destructive man [referring to Bush] be so popular with the American people?... Not only is he poisoning our air and water - he's poisoning our political system as well.

  Barbra Streisand

  Men, Air, People

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• Well, my contention is that the political system of this country is so designed criminally to prevent this, that if the black man even started in that direction, which is a mature step and it's the only way to really solve this problem and to prove that he is the intellectual equal of others, why, the racists and the segregationists would fight that harder than they're fighting the present efforts to integrate.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Fighting, Men

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

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• That sort of lack of awareness on the part of an activist about the constraints of our political system and the constraints on this office, I think, sometimes would leave me to mutter under my breath. Very rarely did I lose it publicly. Yeah, usually I'd just smile.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Office, Political

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• The American political system is a giant bureaucracy.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Political, Giants, Bureaucracy

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• In my view, what really counts here, as our political system falls apart before our very eyes, where voters really feel like they've been thrown under the bus, for good reason, and where they are dropping out of these two corporate-sponsored political parties.

  Jill Stein

  Party, Fall, Eye

  Source: www.democracynow.org

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• Sometimes we overemphasize the political system. There are other ways to make a difference. There's technology, there's media, there's business.

  Van Jones

  Technology, Differences, Media

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Work can be undertaken to create an authentic independent political party, a real party, based on popular participation from the ground up, not a top-down candidate producing organization like the two official parties, working from school boards to state legislatures and beyond. Not easy in the regressive U.S. political system, but not impossible.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Party, School

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• Any time the negro becomes involved in mature political action, then the resistance of the politicians who benefit from the exploited political system as it now stands will be forced to put, exercise more violent action to deprive the negro of his mature political action.

  Malcolm X

  Exercise, Political, Benefits

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

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