The prestige of the news is founded on the unstated assumption that our lives are forever poised on the verge of critical transformation thanks to the two driving forces of modern history: politics and technology.
—Alain de Botton in Religion for Atheists
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the Earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
—Eugene Debs
The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
—Hannah Arendt
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Poverty is not wholly a personal failure. It also represents the failure of an economic system. And the remedy is not wholly one of charity, but of political and economic action. Poverty is a reflection also on those who are not poor.
—Brooks Atkinson
Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
—Frank Dane
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
—Dan Rather
Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.
—Eric Hoffer
A cult is a religion with no political power.
—Tom Wolfe
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
—Eugene McCarthy
They call it the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it.
—George Carlin
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This helps explain why American culture is so hostile to the idea of limits, why voters during the last energy shortage rejected the sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter and elected Ronald Reagan who told them it was still "morning in America." Nowhere does the myth of progress have more fervent believers.
—Ronald Wright
I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
—Bob Dylan
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
—Eugene McCarthy
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
—H. L. Mencken