Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are ‘chosen’, the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.
We get the politicians we deserve and the environment we deserve.
Politicians and the government have become too interested in short-term gains. Of course, if you look at the direct financial returns in the short term, human space flight is expensive. But they need to look longer term.
The older generation grew up on blow-dried anchors, plastic politicians, and an ocean of pretense. Realness seems unvarnished and unpolished to them.
Politicians are nauseating by definition… They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.
I cover media people the way they cover politicians.
I wish politicians would put the environment at the centre of every agenda.
If bitter party name-calling turns people off then smear politics just destroys all credibility in the aims of politicians, the role of political parties and the political process itself.
Attack politics costs us dearly in terms of insight into the candidates. In a presidential campaign, the focus is so tight that the politicians are afraid to say anything that hasn’t been scripted.
There’s something just so kind of smooth about politicians.
Several politicians and wives of politicians have been public about their experiences with depression or bipolar illness, including Lawton Chiles, Patrick Kennedy, Tipper Gore and Kitty Dukakis. Each made a tremendous difference by doing so.
If we wander around as politicians jumping at every shadow and desperately afraid of having our words taken out of context or attacks layered on in an unfair way, I think we’re actually doing a disrespect to Canadians, to people’s intelligence.
Politicians who wear little tennis socks with the balls at the back should not be taken seriously.
A lot of politicians, not surprisingly, hire consultants to help them with their nonverbals, presence, generally how they come across.
You often see politicians who try to put on a different persona; they think they should be more jolly or serious. Invariably, the persona they choose is worse than their own.
Our democracy depends on a free and independent press. When politicians call reporting they don’t like ‘fake news,’ they undermine trust in our civic organizations for their own political gain.
I fear some of our leaders today have lost the courage to stand up. What we have now are politicians. They won’t offer real plans, and only stand up when they want to blame someone else.
What passes for real debate in Washington often seems more like an echo chamber, with politicians talking at politicians.
Don’t fall in love with politicians, they’re all a disappointment. They can’t help it, they just are.
Solemnity in politicians is not only tiresome but may even mask those twin sins – self-righteousness and intolerance – for the opinions of others. If I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t live, especially in politics.
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.
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.
Politicians… talk in generalities and lies, and I think they’ve caused all our grief. They’re so awful, they’re really funny. I hate thinking this because my dad loved politics.
I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.
We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don’t control that. If politicians want a war we don’t control that. Acts of terrorism, we can’t control them.
Welcome to the decline of America where, in six short decades, we have gone from aspiring to judge a man by the content of his character to aspiring that every reporter look just like politicians they cover.
The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the ‘seagull syndrome’ – we fly in, scratch around and fly out.
Businesses – we protect our businesses with the guns, our banks, our money. We protect politicians with guns.
Politics is a game and a profession. It doesn’t really serve the people the politicians are supposed to serve.
Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.
A politician’s goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
Thank you to the readers of the ‘Huffington Post’ for voting me the ‘Hottest Freshman’ of the 111th Congress. It’s about time politicians from Illinois were known for something other than bad haircuts or having the ability to walk on water.
Be honest. Be honest with yourself, be honest with, you know, your fellow politicians. This is a rare quality of politicians.
Americans are guaranteed the constitutional right to legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, and it’s past time for Republicans to stop using the issue as a political football. In fact, it’s past time for Republican politicians to stop interfering in women’s personal lives, period.
I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination – my imagination is always fertile. I’m either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do.
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.
I’m not a career politician. I spent 30 years in business. I can tell you that people in California have had it with career politicians: they are done.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that’s less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
What politicians want to create is irreversible change because when you leave office someone changes it back again.
Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.
Well, I don’t think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.
The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power.
This is the fundamental problem with the ruling class in Washington, D.C. – the party bosses, the K Street crowd, the lobbyists who control all these politicians. They will do anything to maintain their power. They will do anything. They will say anything.
Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.
When politicians say, ‘Oh, parents should supervise their kids’ Internet use,’ it drives me crazy.
What’s distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn’t care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn’t worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call ‘the problem of dirty hands.’
Our society constantly promotes role models for masculinity, from superheroes to politicians, where the concept of being a ‘man’ is based in their ability to be tough, dominant – and even violent when required.
I think there’s a disconnect between political leaders and young voters around a lot of things related to the private sector. For example, a lot of politicians continue to attack big banks. While I’m not a defender of big banks, my sense is younger voters have had generally pretty good experiences with banks.
We shouldn’t have politicians micromanaging this war because it is complex and unconventional.
Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep.
The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.
The markets want to force us to do certain things. That we won’t do. Politicians have to make sure that we’re unassailable, that we can make policy for the people.
The web of influence which News Corporation spun in Britain, which effectively bent politicians, police and many others in public life to its will, amounted to a shadow state.
Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.
