| My Political Credo - in others' words |
[Dec. 1st, 2005|03:52 pm] |
Below are some of my favorite quotes, originally penned or spoken by people across the ideological spectrum. Taken together, they come close to approximating my views on government and politics.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
-- Lord Acton
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
-- John Adams [In Defense of British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials (Dec.4, 1770)]
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-- John Adams [Notes for an Oration in Braintree Massachusetts (Spring 1772)]
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
-- John Adams [Letter to Abigail Adams (July 17, 1775)]
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties... This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
-- John Adams [Attributed]
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-- Samuel Adams
I very much dislike doctrinaire liberals -- they want to own your minds. And I don't like reactionary conservatives. I like to face issues in terms of conditions and not in terms of someone's inborn political philosophy.
-- Rep. Carl Albert (D-OK)
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee.
-- F. Lee Bailey
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Our greatest security comes from the advance of human liberty, because free nations do not support terror; free nations do not attack their neighbors; free nations do not develop weapons of mass terror to threaten the world. Americans believe that freedom is the deepest need and hope of every human heart. We believe that freedom is the future of every nation. And we know that freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman living in this world.
-- George W. Bush
[Edit: December 4, 2007 - Rather unbelievably, our President used the exact words above in quite a few of his speeches in 2003. I had originally assumed that they were snuck into a single speech by a speechwriter going offscript. I can now only assume that those people who assert that our President lacks a sense of irony are either more correct than I knew or very, very wrong.]
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be.
-- Rosalynn Carter
Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister
You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
-- Doctor Who
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.
-- Edward Dowling
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
[Edit: December 4, 2007 - I had previously quoted a condensed paraphrase of Ike's words above, solely because I had not read his "Cross of Iron" speech in full and was simply quoting from it as I had seen it quoted by others. Shame on me for not going to primary sources. The whole speech is well worth reading, btw.]
[The poor] have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-- Ben Frankin
Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.
-- William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist, 1831
... It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-- Hermann Goering, testimony at the Nuremburg trials
The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.
-- Jim Hightower, Texas Agriculture Commissioner
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey
Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.
-- Andrew Jackson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
-- Thomas Jefferson
[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'.... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons.... We at The Weekly Standard are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.
-- William Kristol
[Edit: September 25, 2007 - Perhaps I should make clear here that I like the quote above because of what I think it exemplifies in the neocon mindset, not because I personally agree with it]
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
-- Sinclair Lewis
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance.
-- Abraham Lincoln
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
-- Abraham Lincoln
[Edit: September 25, 2007 - Not a conservative myself by almost any definition, I still feel nostalgic for this old-style version of conservatism. I think a lot of people are still under the misapprehension that this is what the modern day Right stands for.]
If fascism came to America it would be on a program of Americanism.
-- Huey Long
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
-- H. L. Mencken
[Edit: Added December 4, 2007 - I think there is more than a little truth to this. Without advocating for anarchy, I maintain that no government in existence is wholly representative of the best of the people it governs.]
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
-- H. L. Mencken
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine
Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.
-- Senator William Proxmire (D-WI)
I have spent my career trying to get Congressmen to spend the people's money as if it were their own. But I have failed.
-- Senator William Proxmire (D-WI)
I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.
-- Ronald Reagan
...the things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
When all is said and done, and statesmen discuss the future of the world, the fact remains that people fight these wars.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
...first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
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 the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
-- Teddy Roosevelt, in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918
Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.
-- Teddy Roosevelt, Seventh Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907
Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.
-- Teddy Roosevelt, A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
-- Teddy Roosevelt, Pasadena, CA, May 8, 1903
[The word class has] been excised from the acceptable political vocabulary, except in the limited usage of right-wingers when they accuse liberals of inciting 'class warfare' -- a charge that means it's okay for rich people to vote their economic interests but it's not all right to encourage poor people to do so.
-- Harry Shearer
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties -- but right through every human heart -- and all human hearts.
-- Alexander Sozhenitzyn
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
-- Josef Stalin
When an American says he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun or the wide rising plains, the mountains and the seas. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
-- Adlai Stevenson
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-- Tom Stoppard
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
-- Mark Twain
It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
-- George Washington |
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