Quotes for a Culture of Peace - POLITICS

The environmental movement has led some of the most successful global campaigns in terms of raising public and political consciousness about the relationship of environment and development and offering alternatives for better governance at all levels from community to the international arena.
~ Michele Perrault

"The Greek word for idiot, literally translated, means one who does not participate in politics. That sums up my conviction on the subject."
Gladys Pyle, Senator (1890-1989)

"'If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue - control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is - a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.... 'So. We must challenge. It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including in the workplace where we spend so much of our lives'...."
-- Kim Stanley Robinson

I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
-- David Rockefeller

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
-- Will Rogers

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.
-- Arundhati Roy

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power. One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, 'one man, one vote', while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into economic extinction. 'Survival of the fittest' and inequalities in purchasing power is what capitalist efficiency is all about. Individuals and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. The American South had such a system for more than two centuries. Democracy is not comparable with slavery.
-- Lester Thurow

"The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them."
-- Leo Tolstoy

“Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.”
-- Mark Twain

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
-- Mark Twain

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
-- Mark Twain

“Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.”
-- Gore Vidal

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
-- Gore Vidal

POLITICS QUOTES

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5

POLITICAL
HERO PIX

Rebecca Adamson | Maude Barlow | Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read
The Culture of Peace Book
A Guide for the Culture of Peace Movement
FREE Online