#politics

Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#politics #art

Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hear a word about the rest ↗

— Alfred de Vigny

#politics #nature

A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along? ↗

— Jon Meacham

#along #american #american politics #automatic #cooperate

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing. ↗

— Neil Postman

#elections #irrelevance #media #nate-silver #news

The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats... ↗

— T.H. White

#communism #democrats #humor #politics #age

I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#genocide #ideology #politics #society #terrorism

But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#politics #age

The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away. ↗

— John Frohnmayer

#law #politics #art

Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily. He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.' 'My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ... 'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.' 'Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.' 'Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane. ↗

— Charles Finch

#politics #speeches #age

Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#actors #dinner #drama #dramatic #fantastic