#politics

["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#fear #politicians #politics #science-fiction #star-trek

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#politics #war #failure

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#politics #independence

Presidents are selected, not elected. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#politics #presidency #presidents #voting #president

Prolific irony - For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn't pronounce the word "nuclear. ↗

— T. Rafael Cimino

#americans #atomic-bomb #george-bush #nuclear #nuclear-weapons

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

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