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

The only thing we really have to fear is fearmongering itself.

- Maureen Dowd

America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.

- Jim Hightower

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Think globally, act locally.

- Rene Dubos

The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

- William Blum

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

- Aldous Huxley

The best safeguard against fascism is to establish social justice to the maximum extent possible.

- Arnold Toynbee

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

- Louis D. Brandeis

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

- Mark Twain

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow.

- Abraham Lincoln

We can no longer tolerate anti-intellectualism. We can no longer tolerate liberal-bashing and we can no longer tolerate the politics of the dumb and the mean.

- Janeane Garofolo

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

- Carl Sagan

The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve.

- Laozi (Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, Lao Tsu)

America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking.

- Wilma Mankiller



The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right -- it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

- Christopher Lasch



Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

- A. Philip Randolph



The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

- Frederick Douglass



I believe in only one thing: liberty, but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

- H. L. Mencken



The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

- William Ellery Channing



It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so...

- Robert Heinlein



You have to do something political every single day. Politics at its core is really about organizing people to do something for a cause that is bigger than themselves. April 13, 2011, at Yale University

- Howard Dean



I think most people... would be glad to pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president, if only they could have the same economy they had when Bill Clinton was president.

- Howard Dean



I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

- Ann Richards



I'm a compromiser and a maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works.

- Lyndon B. Johnson



It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.

- Deborah Tannen



There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark," but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children." There is something wrong with that press.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



I want to make one thing clear: I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-affirmative action, I'm pro- environment, pro-health care, and pro-labor. And if that ain't a Democrat, then I must be at the wrong meeting.

- Wesley Clark



The United States should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.

- George Washington



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 D. Roosevelt



When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

- Charles Evan Hughes



Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

- Will Rogers



If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.

- Howard Zinn



The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face.

- Clare Boothe Luce



Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

- Jim Hightower



Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it well.

- Michael Wolfe



Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

- Robert Byrne



Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country -- and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

- Charles Krauthammer



A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

- James Freeman Clarke



I was raised to speak out about politics and the world around me. I would do it whether I was in the public or not. It is the way I was taught. The American way.

- Judy Collins



Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

- Jim Hightower



The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.

- Edward R. Murrow



- Bo Lozoff