Politician Quotes - page 24
Not since the day almost 45 years ago, when word reached Washington that his brother, John, had been cut down in Dallas, has there been news about an individual that struck so deep a blow to so many in this capital. The medical bulletin from Massachusetts General Hospital about Sen. Ted Kennedy was at once a personal tragedy and a political cataclysm. In his 46 years in the Senate, Kennedy probably has touched more people, in more cherished ways, than any other public figure. And his illness threatens to alter, for the worse, the prospects of every other politician -- starting with Barack Obama and John McCain.
Ted Kennedy
This was not a blurted, off-the-cuff comment - Kennedy was reading from a prepared text. It was not a shocked first reaction to the abuses at Abu Ghraib - the story had broken more than a week earlier. Incredibly, the senior senator from Massachusetts really was equating the disgraceful mistreatment of a few Iraqi prisoners by a few American troops with the unspeakable sadism, rape, and mass murder that had been routine under Saddam Hussein. Kennedy's vile calumny should have triggered outrage. Here was the most prominent liberal politician in America accusing his own government of the very savagery it said it had gone to war to uproot. It was the worst kind of anti-American poison, and it was coming not from a crackpot with no following but from one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. It should have unleashed an uproar. It unleashed nothing.
Ted Kennedy
For a disciple of Jesus, in each case the decision hinges upon the answer to the question, Is it Christian? Is it a thing that Jesus could do without sin? Is it in harmony with his teaching and desires? Can it be followed without violating his way of life? Is it such that he can use it, sanction it and bless it? If the devout monk had decided the question solely upon these grounds, he should not have used torture to conquer the heretic, the judge should not have used the stake to silence witches, the politician should not adopt the evil practices of his opponent, and if the Christian citizen uses this same test, he should not, in my opinion, use the sword in resisting the military despot.
Kirby Page
I have been a learner all my life, and I am a learner still. ... I have some ideas that may not be thought to furnish good materials for a liberal politician. I do not like changes for their own sake, I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better. ... [T]he basis of my liberalism is this. It is the lesson which I have been learning ever since I was young. I am a lover of liberty; and that liberty which I value for myself, I value for every human being in proportion to his means and opportunities. That is a basis on which I find it perfectly practicable to work in conjunction with a dislike to unreasoned change and a profound reverence for everything ancient, provided that reverence is deserved.
William Ewart Gladstone
History often repeats itself. For example, World War I and World War II. But rest assured that there are many people in all walks of life-likened to military officer Stanislav Petrov, activist Malala Yousafzai, and politician President Jimmy Carter-who are doing everything possible to prevent World War III.
Newton Lee
I retired from professional chess to form a pro-democracy, anti-Putin movement in Russia. As you could see, it didn't go so well. But it was not about winning or losing. I knew it was my moral duty in keeping with the slogan of Soviet dissidents: "Do what you must and so be it." Ah, my friends and critics both kept telling me, "Gary, you are a chess player, you're not a politician. This is not chess. You see everything in black and white. Politics are gray. You have to compromise." Really? Those who peacefully marched with me for free Russia are either in exile, like me. Or in jail, like Alexei Navalny. Or even murdered like Boris Nemtsov.
Compromise? Not black and white? Are you sure? Compromise with this?
Garry Kasparov
Boris Johnson is the most dangerous politician in Britain, precisely because of his charm. The politicians who want to move the party and our country further to the right want Boris. And well they might: he is the consummate televisual politician. Funny and likable, even when he errs it's cute, like a shaved Winnie the Pooh accidentally eating all the honey.
Russell Brand
Perhaps I lost as a politician, perhaps my self-confidence played a trick on me because I did not recognize the double threat – from zealots and radicals, and from reactionaries in my immediate surroundings. Nonetheless, perestroika won. A relapse into the past is out of the question.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Powell did strike me, however, as an extremely capable and intelligent Conservative politician. There was no fanatical gleam in his eyes, though I do remember feeling that his attitude to India was slightly strange. I could not place it at the time; it was neither jingoism nor simply nostalgia, but nor was it the scholarly interest of a historian or the detached reflections of a logician. Many years later when I was reading Paul Scott's opus on the British in India, I suddenly remembered Powell. One of the major characters in Scott's novels reminded me of him. It was Ronald Merrick, whose ambiguous class background in Britain ultimately exploded in colonial India. This was a reflection of something that ran very deep in many middle- and lower-middle-class Englishmen and women who had served as colonial administrators or officers in India.
Tariq Ali
He is a superb debater, skilful in his deployment of argument, sensitive to the mood of the House, sometimes commanding in his use of language. However harshly his Budgets may hit the pocket, at least they should fall pleasantly on the ear... [H]e has today a more committed personal following than any other senior Labour politician... [T]he impression being built up of him as an intelligent, liberal, idealistic figure has won him some support even on the left, in addition to his firm adherents among the younger men of the centre and right.
Roy Jenkins
Powell did strike me, however, as an extremely capable and intelligent Conservative politician. There was no fanatical gleam in his eyes, though I do remember feeling that his attitude to India was slightly strange. I could not place it at the time; it was neither jingoism nor simply nostalgia, but nor was it the scholarly interest of a historian or the detached reflections of a logician. Many years later when I was reading Paul Scott's opus on the British in India, I suddenly remembered Powell. One of the major characters in Scott's novels reminded me of him. It was Ronald Merrick, whose ambiguous class background in Britain ultimately exploded in colonial India. This was a reflection of something that ran very deep in many middle- and lower-middle-class Englishmen and women who had served as colonial administrators or officers in India.
Enoch Powell
Powell is the politician who dominates our age as no other does. The arguments that he articulated in the 1960s and 1970s resonate across the world. On the one hand, the seemingly unstoppable rise of the populist right, from France's Marine Le Pen to Hungary's Viktor Orban. On the other, the abiding split on Europe within the Conservative party that no leader has ever healed. The age of Brexit is the age of Powell.
Enoch Powell
Cyril Chantler, one of Britain's wisest doctors, likes to give people a photocopy of Enoch Powell's book on medicine and politics and tell them that it's the best thing ever written on the NHS. Younger readers may not have heard of Enoch Powell, but he was a Tory minister of health in the early 1960s. He is most famous for his racist "rivers of blood speech," and I can remember protesting outside his Belgravia home. Could he really have written the best book on the NHS? I think that Cyril is right. One of Powell's strengths is that he was a distinguished classicist and writes beautifully, with directness, clarity, and wit: it's like reading Tacitus on the NHS. Another strength is his inability to dissimulate; the source of his catastrophic speech, his weakness as a politician, and his most famous observation that "all political careers end in failure."
Enoch Powell
For those who saw and heard Enoch Powell, the memory is indelible – the black moustache, the burning eyes, the hypnotic, metallic voice, the precision of language, the agility in debate. These will be largely lost to future generations. But, in a more important respect, Powell will survive more surely than any other British politician of the 20th century except Winston Churchill. His speeches and writings will be read so long as there exists a political and parliamentary culture in which speaking and writing matter. And if there comes a time when such a culture is all but destroyed, those brave few who wish to restore it will find in the thoughts of Enoch Powell something approaching their Bible.
Enoch Powell
One feels of him that there was much he did not understand, but not that there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking. I have never been able to feel much liking for Gandhi, but I do not feel sure that as a political thinker he was wrong in the main, nor do I believe that his life was a failure. ... One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!
George Orwell
I had a special project to do a campaign for a Philadelphia politician named Arlen Spector (sic). "When do I get to see Arlen Spector?” I asked. "You don't.” Spector was a district attorney in Philadelphia, running for mayor. He wanted New York advertising but he had placed through a Philadelphia agency. I complained about not being able to see Arlen Spector. "Are you crazy?” his people said. "Nobody gets to meet Arlen Spector. We can't even see him.” "All right,” I said, "what's Arlen Spector for?” "Arlen Spector is for getting elected.” "All right,” I said, "what's Arlen Spector against?” "Arlen Spector is against losing.” I did the campaign, but Arlen Spector lost.
Jerry Della Femina
The subject of religious liberty, has been so canvassed for fourteen years, and has so far prevailed, that in Virginia, a politician can no more be popular, without the possession of it, than a preacher who denies the doctrine of the new birth; yet many, who make this profession, behave in their families, as if they did not believe what they profess. For a man to contend for religious liberty on the court-house green, and deny his wife, children and servants, the liberty of conscience at home, is a paradox not easily reconciled.
John Leland (Baptist)
