Politics

Aristotle once wrote, “Man is by nature a political animal.” Given our current political climate, it is pretty safe to say that he was right. Even the most enlightened centrist would be lying to themselves if, come election night, they weren’t silently pulling for one candidate over the other. With that being said, we’ve summoned our favorite quotes from critics of the political system, political writers, and politicians themselves. Enjoy!

“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

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

Thomas Sowell

“In life, most of us seek affirmation. We think we seek information but if you’re a conservative watching Fox News or a liberal watching MSNBC you’re not seeking information, you’re seeking affirmation. Tell me what I want to hear.”

Colin Cowherd

“There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

Ronald Reagan

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Obama

“A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism. I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.”

Nassim Taleb

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Mark Twain

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

Ernest Benn

“Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

John F. Kennedy

“The truth is, there are not two kinds of people. There’s only one: the kind that loves to divide up into gangs who hate each other’s guts. Both conservatives and liberals agree among themselves, on their respective message boards, in uncannily identical language, that their opponents lack any self-awareness or empathy, the ability to see the other side of an argument or to laugh at themselves. Which would seem to suggest that they’re both correct.”

Tim Kreider

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

Mahatma Gandhi

“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Ronald Reagan

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some diehard’s vote.”

David Foster Wallace

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

William F. Buckley Jr.

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

Karl Marx

“If you scoff at intellectuals, harass scientists, and reward only athletic achievements, then the future is very dark indeed.”

John F. Kennedy

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

Plato

“The world is messy. There are ambiguities. This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re politically woke, and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly . . . Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, ‘Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out.’ That is not activism.”

Barack Obama