#politic

Far from checking the spread of immorality, repression has always extended and deepended it. Thus it is futile to oppose it by rigorous legislation which trespasses on individual liberty. ↗

— Daniel Guérin

#politics #anarchism

That's what I like to call him, "the current president." I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#president

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#politics #psychology #revolution #ignorance

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. ↗

— Karl Marx

#class-struggle #marx #philosophy #political-science #science

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic. ↗

— John Rawls

#philosophy #politics #ideology

I am an anarch in space, a metahistorian in time. Hence I am committed to neither the political present nor tradition; I am blank and also open and potent in any direction. Dear old Dad, in contrast, still pours his wine into the same decaying old wineskins, he still believes in a constitution when nothing and no one constitutes anything. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#history #metahistory #politics #tradition #anarchism

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#politics #virtue

I would say exploit the stupid, because they’re expendable and loyal, but it’s a fact: politicians are not loyal. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#exploit #exploitation #fact #loyal #loyalty

When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality. Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not. President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are. ↗

— Robert B. Reich

#class-warfare #conservatism #economics #liberalism #mathematics

In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor. p. 264 ↗

— Rory Stewart

#politics #money