Power and money

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test his character, give him power. ~ Abraham Lincoln

• In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom. ~ Ralph Reed, head of Christian Coalition, in memo to Enron executives, (2000)

• Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better. ~ Justin Dart, chairman, Port Industries (1982)

• Politics has gotten so expensive that it takes a lot of money to even get beat with. ~ Will Rogers (1931)

• There are two things you need for success in politics. Money and I can't think of the other. ~ Senator Mark Hannah (R-OH), 1903

• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)

• All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from the want of honor or virtue, so much as the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. ~ John Adams

• If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks ill deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson

• History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. ~ James Madison

• If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. ~ Andrew Jackson

• The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

• Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

• Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes its laws. ~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1790)

Presidency

• PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

Public opinion and polls

• That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion. ~ Thomas Huxley in "Universities, Actual & Ideal"

• If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are the politically awake and the hypnotized. ~ Doris "Granny D" Haddock

• In politics, there are things which you do but don't talk about them and things which you talk about but don't do anything. ~ Constantine Karamanlis

Public safety, domestic security, and gun control

• The streets are safe in Philadelphia — it's only the people who make them unsafe. ~ Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

• Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak. ~ George Orwell

• No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. ~ Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (1776)

• [The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. ~ James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

• Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. ~ Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

• The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned. ~ Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1790

Public service

• If there is anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public. ~ Anonymous

• Each generation is responsible to make the future of the next. ~ Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (Speech at the Capitol Visitor Center, 07.12.2008)

The "Masses"

• They [governments] talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the fools and the suckers. ~ Graham Greene, The Third Man

• The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie, than to a small one. ~ Adolf Hitler

Reform

• Reason accepts no authority above itself and is necessarily subversive.~ Allan Bloom

• A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

• You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. ~ Peter F. Hamilton (through character Endron) in The Neutronium Alchemist

• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ President John F. Kennedy

• We must reform if we would conserve. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• Reform is not for the shortwinded. ~ Arthur Vanderbilt, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice (1949)

Campaign finance reform

• Today's political campaigns function as collection agencies for broadcasters. You simply transfer money from contributors to television stations. ~ Senator Bill Bradley, 2000

• We've got a real irony here. We have politicians selling access to something we all own -our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own — our airwaves. It's a terrible system. ~ Newton Minow, former Federal Communications Commission chairman (2000)

• You're more likely to see Elvis again than to see this bill pass the Senate. ~ Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (1999) on the McCain-Feingold Bill on Campaign Reform

• Unless we fundamentally change this system, ultimately campaign finance will consume our democracy. ~ Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) (1996)

• [Buckley v. Valeo is] one of the most weakly reasoned, poorly written, initially contradictory court opinions I've ever read. ~ Senator (and former federal district court judge) George J. Mitchell (D-ME) (1990)

• We don't buy votes. What we do is we buy a candidate's stance on an issue. ~ Allen Pross, executive director, California Medical Association's PAC (1989)

• Political action committees and moneyed interests are setting the nation's political agenda. Are we saying that only the rich have brains in this country? Or only people who have influential friends who have money can be in the Senate? ~ Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (1988)

• The day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 today. ~ George Washington Plunkett (1905)

• Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor, not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and propitious fortune. ~ James Madison, Federalist 57 (1788)

Religion, separation of church and state

• Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics. ~ Wendell Phillips

• Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. ~ Jamie Raskin, 2006-03-01
  • Raskin was responding to state senator Nancy Jacobs at a hearing on a proposed Maryland constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage [2]. At the time, Raskin was himself a candidate for senate.

• The true destiny of America is religious, not political: it is spiritual, not physical. ~ Alvin R. Dyer in Ensign (November 1968)

Voting and participation

• Decisions are made by those who show up. ~ unknown; variously attributed to Woody Allen and Harry S Truman

• Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television? ~ Art Buchwald,Quotations for our Time by Laurence J. Peter (1977)

• If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ~ Emma Goldman

• It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. ~ Robert H. Jackson, United States Attorney General & Assoc. Justice

• The French approach election differently than the Americans... they vote. ~ Bill Maher

• Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. ~ Confucius

• Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair. ~ George Burns

• Next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election. ~ George Carlin

• Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy." ~Hazen Pingree, former mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan.

War, military, and peace

• Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
  • Mao Zedong, "On Protracted War" (May 1938)

• Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
  • Mao Zedong, "The Little Red Book"

• Take the so-called politics of fear — the constant reference to risks, from hoodies on the street corner to international terrorism. Whatever the truth of these risks and the best ways of dealing with them, the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot bear the uncertainties associated with them. Politics then becomes a question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.
  • Ex-vicar Mark Vernon; quoted in "God. Who knows?", BBC News, 4 December 2006. URL accessed on 2006-12-10.

• This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
  • Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell address, January 17, 1961; Final TV Talk 1/17/61 (1), Box 38, Speech Series, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President, 1953-61, Eisenhower Library; National Archives and Records Administration.

See also

• Censorship
• Diplomacy
• Education
• Freedom of speech
• United States Congress

References

1. ↑ Today’s Letter: A VDARE.COM Contributor Worries About Smears; Peter Brimelow Reassures Him.