Political Quotes Thread

Everybody has got some quotes they like and if you think of any post them up.


“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
― James Madison

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984

"Every time there is a major decision on an issue, the news reports go something like, "The Democrats scored a major political victory today," or "The Republicans soundly defeated the Democrats today." Well, the real questions that need to be asked when the dust settles each and every time is "Did the American people win or lose today?" - Unknown

“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

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" - Plato

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin

Edited by munchymeiser900, 01 July 2012 - 08:56 PM.

Its so true.

Doctors give you expensive pills with horrible side effects while most still care little or know nothing about medical marijuana. Bankers create complex derivatives and trade with fiat currency to impoverish us all. The press busies itself with useless trivia and celebrity culture. Universities create specialists who speak in obscure, specialized languages and graduate students with no meaningful marketable skills. Lawyers manipulate the incredibly complex legal system to get those with money, power, and connections out of trouble while the poor are screwed. The Christian religion has been manipulated by bigots and charlatans to demonize homosexuality. Governments litigate us into an increasingly Orwellian society.

I donT like Reagan but this is a good one.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Fuck Ronald Reagan.

anyway,

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

"Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government."

"In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons [...] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world."

"A presidential candidate may be 'drafted' in response to 'overwhelming popular demand,' but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room."

all from Edward Bernays in the 1928 book Propaganda.

I will have much more to contribute later. Good topic.

edit:

"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.

Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."

- Adam Smith

seriously, that's not some Marx or whatever. That's the Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations.

Edited by TheDankery, 02 July 2012 - 08:34 AM.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. ~Thomas Paine

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952

“When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.”
― Ron Paul

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies"
-Ron Paul

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984

^ Never heard this one before, spot on!

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
-George Washington

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
-Mark Twain

"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means."- Theobald Wolfe Tone

“As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom.” - Thomas Davis



“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” Bobby Sands


"“If a man has not found something worth fighting for than he is not fit to live.” - Martin Luther King.

Excess of liberty, wheather it lies in state or individual,seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
-Plato

Kstigs found a good one

Obligatory:

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy


"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

Karl Marx, The German Ideology

Edited by Pale Blue Dot, 07 July 2012 - 05:33 PM.

"This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer,our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead in the future!"
-Adolf Hitler, 1935