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POLITICS

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
-- John Quincy Adams

* It's crucial to understand that as a society, we can reorganize. We can reorganize socially, politically, and economically, and we can reorganize according to our values.
-- Rebecca Adamson

 

 

Our government is never what it seems,
Making secret deals behind the scenes.
Selling favors, guns and oil deeds,
It's supposed to serve its governed people's needs!
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

Why are they the ones that get to say what is right and wrong?
The profits before people way makes it hard to get along.
We want a world that's fair and just with peace for everyone.
We've got to go on now, we must, before our world is done.
We want our world back!
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* “I believe there should be a part of society that conscientiously works as a ‘critical partner’ of the government.”
-- Dewi Rana Amir

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
-- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

* No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is urgent.
-- Maude Barlow

 

When you become active in the system and communicate to your representatives, and they don't vote in accordance with your values, your responsibility is to support candidates who will.
-- Joan Blades

Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.
-- Barbara Boxer

“There is no private domain of a person's life that is not political, and there is no political issue that is not ultimately personal.”
--
Charlotte Bunch

... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
-- Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.
-- Stokely Carmichael

 

"Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them."
-- Shirley Chisholm

 

Representative democracy, as in, say, the United States or Great Britain, would be criticized by an anarchist of this school on two grounds. First of all because there is a monopoly of power centralized in the State, and secondly -and critically - because representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere. Anarchists of this tradition have always held that democratic control of one's productive life is at the core of any serious human liberation, or, for that matter, of any significant democratic practice. That is, as long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful.
-- Noam Chomsky

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.
-- Eugene V. Debs

You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.
-- Eugene V. Debs

"We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever."
-- Declaration of Rights for Women, July 1876

“We have a complete void of progressive politics in this country right now. The will of the people goes ignored and unrealized. I'm searching for the people that can enter the political system, a strong third party. We need to consolidate.”
-- Ani DiFranco

"I realized that public affairs were also my affairs. I became active in politics because I saw the possibility, if we all sat back and did nothing, of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on."
-- Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900-1980)

* 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
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

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The arts can bring the heart to the aid of the head, the personal to the political.
-- Scilla Elworthy

“Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Children organizing for political rights will probably be treated initially with ridicule and derision, and then with misunderstanding and perhaps eventually violence if the experience of the struggle for women's suffrage is any precedent. Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the adult refusal to acknowledge that children suffer political discrimination and exclusion. Adults do not perceive children as a minority group but as helpless, inexperienced, defenseless young people who need protection. Adult paternalism seeks to protect and if in this process it curtails freedom, truncates potential and destroys civil liberties this is taken to be incidental. The belief in the legitimacy of paternalism justifies and cements the existing power relationships between adults and young people. This attitude must be confronted, challenged and refuted if young people are to secure their political rights..."
-- Bob Franklin "The Rights of Children"

Every time that religion has identified itself or entangled itself with a particular political movement or a particular government, religion has been harmed by that. I see religion as a powerful positive healing force for this nation and the world. But that force is blunted, weakened, compromised inestimably, if we turn religion into a tool for advancing political strategy; if we make it a matter of how to win political office; if we treat it as anything other than a sacred part of life from which we ought to draw sustenance and values and strength for living courageously as good citizens.
-- C. Welton Gaddy
Promoting active liberty does not mean allowing the majority to run roughshod over minorities. It calls for taking special care that all groups have a chance to fully participate in society and the political process.
-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Take it from me, every vote counts.
~ Al Gore

The Universal Declaration... as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...it not only crystallizes the political thought of our times on these matters, but it has also influenced the thinking of legislators all over the world. 
-- Dag Hammarskjöld, Second UN Secretary-General, 1953-1961

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
-- Vaclav Havel

"America is a country ready to be taken—in fact, longing to be taken—by political leaders ready to restore democracy and trust to the political process."
-- Arianna Huffington

”In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
-- Jesse Jackson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others.
~ Thomas Jefferson

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
~ Thomas Jefferson

“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.”
-- Walter H. Judd

"The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world struggling in violence and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence - not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry - becomes one of the most urgent priorities."
-- Petra Kelly

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
-- John F. Kennedy

* We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but one must take it simply because it is right. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's very important to vote. People died for this right.
-- Lenny Kravitz

Paul Krugman: Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.

“Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth."
-- Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize-winning economist)

 

* Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control.
-- Dennis Kucinich

Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi

“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
-- Louis L'Amour

* There can be no better measure of our governance than the way we treat our children, and no greater failing on our part than to allow them to be subjected to violence, abuse or exploitation.
-- Jessica Lange

Yes, and you should question your government.
-- Jessica Lange

* …in place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible. People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race.
-- Rabbi Michael Lerner

 

It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.
-- C. S. Lewis

* “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”
-- Abraham Lincoln

The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
-- Walter Lippman

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish.
-- Neil A. McDonald

A lot of political people, especially people on the left, have forgotten the importance of humor as an incredible weapon, and a vehicle through which to affect change.
-- Michael Moore

Once you don't vote your ideals... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.
~ Ralph Nader

However difficult it may be to bring it about, some form of world government, with agreed international law and means of enforcing the law, is inevitable.
-- John B. Orr

People are very hungry for something new. I think they are interested in being called to be a part of something larger than the sort of small, petty, slash-and-burn politics that we have been seeing over the last several years.
-- Barack Obama

The environmental movement has led some of the most successful global campaigns in terms of raising public and political consciousness about the relationship of environment and development and offering alternatives for better governance at all levels from community to the international arena.
~ Michele Perrault

"The Greek word for idiot, literally translated, means one who does not participate in politics. That sums up my conviction on the subject."
Gladys Pyle, Senator (1890-1989)

"'If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue - control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is - a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.... 'So. We must challenge. It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including in the workplace where we spend so much of our lives'...."
-- Kim Stanley Robinson

I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
-- David Rockefeller

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
-- Will Rogers

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.
-- Arundhati Roy

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power. One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, 'one man, one vote', while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into economic extinction. 'Survival of the fittest' and inequalities in purchasing power is what capitalist efficiency is all about. Individuals and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. The American South had such a system for more than two centuries. Democracy is not comparable with slavery.
-- Lester Thurow

"The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them."
-- Leo Tolstoy

“Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.”
-- Mark Twain

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
-- Mark Twain

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
-- Mark Twain

“Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.”
-- Gore Vidal

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
-- Gore Vidal

The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.
-- Paul Wellstone

When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.
-- Paul Wellstone

“There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.”
-- Paul Wellstone

And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.
-- Wendell Wilkie
* Politics: “Poli” a Latin word meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "bloodsucking creatures".
-- Robin Williams

The uses of government should be to foster, protect and promote the possession of equality.
-- Victoria Woodhull

The women of the country have the power in their own hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order.
-- Victoria Woodhull

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

Government can't completely take care of people by making a bunch of promises and programs. Organize your communities
-- Neil Young

* "We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times."
-- Howard Zinn

POLITICAL
HERO PIX

Rebecca Adamson | Maude Barlow | Martin Luther King, Jr.

Election Day - 1st Tues after 1st Mon in November (in US)

Leadership Week - February 1-7
Citizenship Day
- September 17

Democracy Day - October 18

 

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