What's Your Favorite Political Quote?

I know, I know - soundbytes are the bane of the modern political era. But c'mon - there are some really good zingers out there!

A few of my faves:

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
-- G.K. Chesterton


To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
-- Teddy Roosevelt


Last one...

All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have many favorites. Howard Baker's "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" rings my chimes of late; as does Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex; Truman's succint "The Buck Stops Here!" and ole Trent Lott's "You can support the troops but not the President." (That one I must admit I did not care for initially, but given present circumstances, it has grown on me over time--heh, heh!!!!).

best, governs least"....could be wrong (about the source), but the quote is still so very relevant.

"I heartily accept the motto,—'That government is best which governs least' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,— 'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

remember who said it. Someone out there will know, I'm sure.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Lincoln.html

Hard to beat prophesy by Lincoln himself.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.htm

Sad to say, because it sounds like it could have come straight from your namesake and would otherwise be a wonderful tool with which to beat up on repulicans!

You can have great wealth or a democracy, but you cannot have both.

Or Harry Truman's
If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat !

or Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.

Forgive the paraphrase. Abraham Lincoln, demonstrating his essential humanity and humility. Do you think Shrub would ever say anything at all similar?

and (ok, flame away) I thought Ronnie Raygun's (words to the following effect) "I will not use age to exploit my opponent's youthful inexperience" was pretty good. (But of course, he was an actor ... )

- Will Rogers, American humorist

True then and, unhappily, true now.
:-(

Personally.. I've always like that quote. :shrug:

Reminds me that Democrats are, as they say...

"Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded."

Republicans on the other hand are repetitive ditto-heads.

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."
--Paul Wellstone

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
--Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75)

Having Truman and Ike back to back at least got us some plain speaking. Just wish Ike would have set the moral leadership on race. But, he sent the troops to Little Rock not because it was the morally right thing to do, but because he was incensed that a governor (Faubus) would challenge the architect of D-Day. Still, way, way better than now, and I place Ike maybe in the upper middle of my list of presidents. (Guess who is firmly at the bottom? Yep, you're right).

we shall all hang separately." - Benjamin Franklin.

That, in a nutshell, is what the Democrats in Congress finally seem to be learning. That's how they all stuck together and defeated today's budget vote.

Sounds like Franklin to me. John Murtha, today on Iraq, of course.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. --- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953


But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on-not toward a strategv of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace. --- JFK, June 10, 1963

"She never tells the truth, even by mistake." I often use that in describing _______ (fill in the blank with any Bu$hco liar).

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

President George HW Bush

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
attibuted to Franklin

When he said of Dickhead Cheney today:

..."I like guys who have never been there to criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys that got five deferments and never been there and sent people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needed to be done."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/17/lol.03.html

~~~~~~~ Kudos to Congressman John Murtha! :patriot:

Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third <“Treason!” cried the Speaker>—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. -H.L.Mencken

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.- John Kenneth Galbraith

eom

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

"Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office." Richard Nixon August 8, 1977

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

Bush's version, when it happens. :evilgrin:

My favorite Mencken quotation on politics is:

A demagogue is a man who tells what he knows to be lies to people he knows to be idiots. (Not sure that this is the EXACT quotation.)


My second favorite is:

Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.


Here are a few more:

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Nature abhors a moron.

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phase makes it, feminine intuition.

No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
Notes on journalism, Chicago Tribune, <19 September 1926>

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.

Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant.

My favorite from the Murphy's Law Canon is applicable to politics and to many,many other areas. Here it is:


Grossman's Misquote: Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

which I've seen in these two versions. I don't know if both are right or not:

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

and

There is always an easy solution to every problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.

will make violent revolution inevitable".

I have been tempted to make a proposal to our Republican friends: that if they stop telling lies about us, we would stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai Stevenson

When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we hold dear are endangered. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)

The Christians had a better chance against the lions than the American consumer has against the OPEC cartel.
Rep.Ed Markey (D-MA)

A penny saved is not a penny earned if at the end of the day you still owe a quarter. - Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

From http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1296&st=&st1 :

"The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time..."

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck

Domestic Division:
All politics is local.
Tip O'Neil

International Divison:
Religion is the opiate of the masses.
Karl Marx

Humor Division:
There's an old saying in Tennessee – I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me – you can't get fooled again.
*

In my opinion, non-violence is not passivity in any shape or form. Non-violence, as I understand it, is the most active force in the world...Non-violence is the supreme law. During my half a century of experience, I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say that I was helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of non-violence,

--Mahatma Gandhi

'The dogma of the quiet past is inadequate to the stormy present.'

Abraham Lincoln

I also like this one, although to avoid offending the good witches among us, I would substitute the word tyrants for the word witches.

'A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles.'

Thomas Jefferson, 1798

...by promising to protect each party from the other.

since Reagan is the art of getting money from the devil and votes from the superstitious, by promising to protect each from the other.

The true patriot must always stand ready to defend his country from its government.

Some MP whose name I can't remember.

I'm a Democrat."

-Will Rogers

There's nothin' more powerful than a man who is in the right and keeps on a comin'. -- General Sam Houston

The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -- H.L. Mencken

A week is a long time in politics - Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical- Thomas Jefferson

Appear at the end of this message too.

When republicans stop telling lies about us we will stop telling the truth about them - Adlai Stevenson

"We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the constitution."

- Abe Lincoln

****

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech."

- Benjamin Franklin, 1722

'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' they said, 'that all men are created equal.' Strange as it may seem, that was the first time in history that anyone had ever bothered to write that down. Decisions are made by those who show up. -- Josiah Bartlet, borrowing from both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Disraeli.

"Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain." -- John F. Kennedy

If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange the apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. -- George Bernard Shaw

If you believe you are right, you have a moral obligation to impose your will upon others. -- Cardinal Tomas de Torquemada (Head Inquisitor)

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

"No man is fit to govern another man without that man's consent." -- Abraham Lincoln

But my favorite quote of all time comes from a Republican Senator from Maine, and her words ring true today:
I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—

* The right to criticize;
* The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
* The right to protest;
* The right of independent thought.
I cannot believe people in Maine favorably compare Olympia Snowe with Margaret Chase Smith...

"Those who are willing to sacrifice essential freedom for security deserve neither."

"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
Carl Sagan:
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise."
Carl Sagan, "The Demon Haunted World", 1995

Nuremberg prosecutor:

Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

"You don't balance the truth by putting on a liar"
E.R. Murrow
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
Mark Twain

"When people think, Democrats win."
~Bill Clinton

and

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."
~Benjamin Franklin

e0m

The true patriot protects his country from its government.

In the heights and horror of the Great Depression:

"We have learned the lesson that extravagant advantage for the few,ultimately depresses the many."

"The next administration must represent not a fraction of the United States,but all of the United States."

"Our real enemies are hunger,want,insecurity,poverty and fear."

How true these words are today 73 years later.....

(Unfortunately, today, I think the "responsibilities of the free press" are completely ignored .)


"Only a FREE and UNRESTRICTED press can effectively expose deception in government.

And paramount among the responsibilites of a free press is the DUTY to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people."

Justice Hugo Black (SCOTUS)
1937-1971

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

For the advocates of the nanny state...

in the ass." (Barry Goldwater.)

Hitler said, in "Mein Kampf" that if you tell a lie for the purpose of propaganda, tell a BIG one ! Because, the bigger the lie is, the more people are apt to believe it, because they can't believe you would dare tell such a big lie if it were not the truth.

snip(Hermann Goering )
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."



BOTH are so timely

"Oh yeah, life goes on..."
"Long after the thrill of living is gone"

"And in the end...the love you take is equal to the love you make"

that could be said to anyone on the right, "Personally, I think you're a fucking idiot."

...government doesn't work and then gets elected and proves it.

1. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the messiah.
2. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith.
3. Baptists do not recognize each other at the liquor store or at Hooters."

...and to do good is my religion."

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR

"A Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!" - James Carville

"Liberals are fearless, confident of humanity, outgoing and optimistic, because they believe most people are pretty much like themselves.

Conservatives are fearful, mistrusting, angry, bitter and afraid because they, too, believe most people are pretty much like themselves."

--anon

billboard..

Give Satan an inch......He becomes a Ruler!

of tyranny over the minds of man... Attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

Have always loved this quote - and it takes on a more personal meaning in this era.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"Republicans believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth".

A supporter once called out, "Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!" And Adlai Stevenson answered, "That's not enough. I need a majority."