Politics × Love

Politics and Love

Browse 30 quotations catalogued under Politics with "love" in the text or topic label.

30 quotes

This collection contains 30 quotations filed under Politics with "love" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Politics and Love; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include Henry David Thoreau, Christopher Hitchens, Donald Trump, William Barber II, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. Th…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "The British monarchy inculcates unthinking credulity and servility. It forms a heavy layer on the general encrustation of our unreformed po…" Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Politics quotes or the concept page for Love.

30 Quotes on Politics and Love

"What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much."

— Henry David Thoreau

"The British monarchy inculcates unthinking credulity and servility. It forms a heavy layer on the general encrustation of our unreformed political institutions. It is the gilded peg from which our unlovely system of social distinction and hierarchy depends. It is an obstacle to the objective public discussion of our own history. It tribalises politics. It entrenches the absurdity of the hereditary principle. It contributes to what sometimes looks like an enfeeblement of the national intelligence, drawing from our press and even from some of our poets the sort of degrading and abnegating propaganda that would arouse contempt if displayed in Zaire or Romania. It is, in short, neither dignified nor efficient."

— Christopher Hitchens

"To me more important is taking care of the people that really have proven to be, to love Donald Trump, as opposed to the political people. And frankly if the political people don't take care of these people, they're not going to win and you're going to end up with maybe a total different kind of government than what you're looking at right now. These people are really angry. They're smart, they're workers, and they're angry. I call them the forgotten men and women. And I use that in speeches, I say they're the forgotten people — they were totally forgotten."

— Donald Trump

"We’re telling people, vote by absentee ballot. In North Carolina, where we have 16 days of early voting, vote early. And if you vote on Election Day, then put your shield on, put your mask on, put your gloves on. Pack you a lunch. Get you a folding chair. Put some water in that lunch bag and vote. And if they want to come watch us vote, let them watch millions of people, because we’re not scared. We’re not giving away this democracy. Let them come and watch. And then stop saying Trump won the last time. He was elected by the Electoral College because of 80,000 votes."

— William Barber II

"While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in Union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from Union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighbouring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other."

— George Washington

"I have been consistent and committed to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. I think our best chance was in 2007, when Ted Kennedy led the charge on comprehensive immigration reform. We have Republican support. We had a president willing to sign it. I voted for that bill. Senator Sanders voted against it. Just think, imagine where we would be today is we had achieved comprehensive immigration reform nine years ago. Imagine how much more secure families would be in our country, no longer fearing the deportation of a loved one; no longer fearing that they would be found out. ... In 2006, when Senator Sanders was running for the Senate from Vermont, he voted in the House with hard-line Republicans for indefinite detention for undocumented immigrants, and then he sided with those Republicans to stand with vigilantes known as Minute Men who were taking up outposts along the border to hunt down immigrants. So I think when you were running for the Senate, you made it clear by your vote, Senator, that you were going to stand with the Republicans. When you got to the Senate in 2007, one of the first things you did was vote against Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform which he’d been working on for years before you ever arrived."

— Hillary Clinton

"Nor does the concept of the Fascist or Nazi dictator appeal to the American liberty loving citizen with his traditional love for democracy and republican institutions which bar both Nazism and Fascism."

— Charles Coughlin

"Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict."

— Lee Kuan Yew

"He represents a noble and courageous dedication to the service of freedom. He never sought for personal aggrandizement, but under heavy temptation remained loyal to the great Cause. He possessed a character that will abide with us through the generations. He loved his fellowmen, and believed in the ultimate triumph of self-government. But he did not consider France had reached a point where representative democracy would be a success. He was practical. Like Washington, he refused a crown. But while he believed Washington performed a great service in accepting the Presidency of America, he believed he had performed an equally great service in rejecting the Presidency of France. He approved the establishment of our republican institutions, and hoped they would one day be a model for the government of his own country. He recognized the value of native institutions. So, while he was loyal to freedom, he was likewise loyal to the Crown. In moderation, in the gradual evolution of government and society, he perceived the strongest defense against both reaction and revolution, and the greatest hope for permanent progress."

— Calvin Coolidge

"The right hon. Gentleman leads a party which claims to support democracy but repudiates those miners who have voted democratically to remain at work and have done so in accordance with their union procedures. He leads a party which condemns violence in general but supports the mass picketing which inevitably ends in violence. He leads a party which has allied itself to the wreckers against the workers. The forces to which the right hon. Gentleman has lent his voice and support have no more love for parliamentary democracy than for the jobs and homes of those who oppose them. Sooner or later, when he has ceased to be of value to their purpose, they will turn on him, just as surely as they have turned on the police, on the steel workers, and on working miners and their families. There is only one word to describe the policy of the right hon. Gentleman when faced with threats, whether from home or abroad, and that word is appeasement. He will live to regret it. It is no policy for Britain."

— Margaret Thatcher

"My dream is to perform in a big, celebratory concert in a free Cuba, but I don't think they'd even let me into the country. And if they did, I'd have to speak against what is going on, which the government fears. I don't know how much change toward democracy we'll see as long as one of the Castro brothers is around, but I do believe there is a future with a new leader someday. But this leader will also love Cuba and really want to take her forward. When that day comes, Emilio and I will be there in any way that we can be of service."

— Gloria Estefan

"From the time, I have been in politics, your love has kept me going. All Gujratis have all right on me, but you have now shared that right with the people of India." "It's the first poll in my political life when I didn't have political sabha in Ahmedabad."

— Narendra Modi

"As algorithms come to know us so well, authoritarian governments could gain absolute control over their citizens, even more so than in Nazi Germany, and resistance to such regimes might be utterly impossible. Not only will the regime know exactly how you feel – it could make you feel whatever it wants. The dictator might not be able to provide citizens with healthcare or equality, but he could make them love him and hate his opponents. Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech. Either democracy will successfully reinvent itself in a radically new form, or humans will come to live in ‘digital dictatorships’."

— Yuval Noah Harari

"There is a tendency in the Muslim community to play the victim and the target of media and political conspiracies. Whilst I don’t dispute the media is unfair in its portrayal of Muslims, and that our governments have hidden agendas to protect their financial interests in lands where populations are primarily Muslim, I think we should take up the example of the Prophet and be more "in control" of our reactions and our opportunities to make dawa through personally instigating positive change in our local communities. We must reach out to our neighbours not with an agenda of conversion, but in simple acts of sincere love. We must stop blaming everybody else for our struggles and hardships and start to take action in our own lives through sincere efforts to improve who we are as individuals."

— Dawud Wharnsby

"The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. America's never been about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That's the principle we were founded on. This country has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that's not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for comes with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great."

— Barack Obama

"I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

— Bill Clinton

"No change could have been more welcome to me. It brought only one embarrassment. The General insisted, overruling every protest of mine, in meticulously observing the protocol involved in my being the senior Cabinet officer. Never would he go through a door before me, or walk anywhere but on my left; he would go around an automobile to enter it after me and sit on the left; in meetings he would insist on my speaking before him. To be treated so by a revered and beloved former chief was a harrowing experience. But the result in government was, I think, unique in the history of the Republic. For the first time and perhaps, though I am not sure, the last, the Secretaries of State and Defense, with their top advisors, met with the Chiefs of Staff in their map room and discussed common problems together. At one of these meetings General Bradley and I made a treaty, thereafter scrupulously observed. The phrases 'from a military point of view' and 'from a political point of view' were excluded from our talks. No such dichotomy existed. Each of us had our tactical and strategic problems, but they were interconnected, not separate."

— Dean Acheson

"To safeguard the KMT’s reins of government and majority in the legislature, as well as the future of the public and the Republic of China, I must apologize to each New Taipei City resident who supports me. I want to tell every Taiwanese and resident of the city that I am doing this because I have to protect the ROC we love, the democratic politics we have fought to preserve and our healthy democracy of checks and balances."

"Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of political progress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation."

— Randolph Bourne

"There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher, which made a very deep impression on me and gave me a love of political biography for the rest of my life."

"Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress? It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do |the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted."

— Owen Lovejoy

"I'm an American, and always will be. I happen to love that big, awkward, sprawling country very much — and its big, awkward, sprawling people. Anyway, I don't like politics; and I don't make "political gestures," as you call it. I don't even believe in politics. To me, politics is like one of those annoying, and potentially dangerous chronic diseases that you just have to put up with in your life if you happen to have contracted it. Politics is like having diabetes. It's a science, a catch-as-catch-can science, which has grown up out of simple animal necessity more than anything else. If I were twice as big as I am, and twice as physically strong, I think I'd be a total anarchist. As it is, since I'm physically a pretty little guy . . . no, in fact, one reason I left was because I believe it is good for an American writer to get outside his country — outside his continent — and see it from a vantage point outside its pervading emotional climate."

— James Jones

"Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy."

— E. M. Forster

"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection. Watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons."

"In addition to economic and military, wartime measures typically encourage a high degree of political, social and intellectual conformity. The general idea is that, in the face of an existential challenge from a vicious enemy, ought to cease. The media tends to become more patriotic, as do former. Such was the case in the United States during the early stages of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when most journalists and even Democratic politicians rallied around the Republican George W. Bush administration. . The trouble is that the "war" against Covid-19 is actually not a war at all. And no one should feel obliged to sign up for it. The loss of, and separation from, loved ones, and the fear and anxiety that is devastating many lives is not an opportunity to fantasize about heroism in battle. The pandemic is, primarily, a global public health emergency; it is made potentially lethal as much by long neglected and underfunded social welfare systems as by a highly contagious virus. A plain description like this is not as stirring as a call to arms — and doesn’t justify the more extreme actions governments have taken against critics during the crisis. It does, however, open up a line of inquiry that journalists ought to pursue, now as well as in the future."

— Pankaj Mishra

"Lots of progressives have legit criticism of Obama’s policy record. Much of the response to that criticism has been “Democratic voters love Obama, so anyone criticizing him is politically dumb!"

— David Sirota

"The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. Therefore an effective statement of these activities — e.g. science, art, religion — is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise … a society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love."

— Stephen Spender

"Let me say that there is no one in our government, at any level, who has the right to tell any American who they should be allowed to love or who they should be allowed to marry. My record in Congress for over six years shows my commitment to fighting for LGBTQ equality. I serve on the equality caucus and recently voted for passage of the Equality Act... Maybe many people in this county can relate to the fact that I grew up in a socially conservative home, held views when I was very young that I no longer hold today. I served with LGBT service members both in training and deployed downrange. I know that they would give their life me, and I would give my life for them."

— Tulsi Gabbard

"I do think democracy has produced chaos, especially visual. A lot of people don't like it and yearn for nineteenth-century images, forgetting that the politics of those images were different than the democracy we love."

— Frank Gehry

"Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems."

— Fritz Sauckel

Key thinkers on this theme

Henry David Thoreau· Literature Christopher Hitchens· Philosophy Donald Trump· Politics William Barber II· Politics George Washington· Politics

Related ideas in Politics

All Politics quotes Explore the idea of Love