#politics

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do. ↗

— Suzanne Farrell

#around #especially #go #goes #i

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#little #politics #pulpit #terms

Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ↗

— Barack Obama

#dreams

I grew up in a strongly socialist family. While I was at school, I worked in party politics and with organizations like the Anti-Nazi League. Everywhere I saw it, I fought prejudice. ↗

— Saffron Burrows

#family #fought #grew #i #league

I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be. ↗

— Rainer W. Fassbinder

#cinema #freud #i #like #marx

I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me. ↗

— Saffron Burrows

#assigned #could #history #i #i think

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise. ↗

— LeVar Burton

#afford #american #american children #another #bureaucratic

Politics is clearly a not so happening topic in our young blood. I could clearly see many students yawning. Some might have been discussing the new Shakira video amongst themselves, the one shown on MTV these days. Bloody donkeys, if it was a porno movie featuring an interracial orgy, their eyes might have ogled out and ears might have become sensitive to the oohs and aahs but not for causes of the nation. Hrmpf …youth power indeed! ↗

— Faraaz Kazi

#youth #youth-culture #movies

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#american #american people #half #hopes #never

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.' ↗

— David Byrne

#call #civic #distance #doing #engagement