Politics Quotes

World peace is not a party question.

It is only the unthinking conservatives who rejoice down in their hearts when a social or economic reform fails to be 100 per cent successful.

It is only the possessors of "headline" mentality that exaggerate or distort the true objectives of those in this Nation whether they be the president of the University of North Carolina or the President of the United States.

You undergraduates who see me for the first time have read your newspapers and heard on the air that I am, at the very least, an ogre - a consorter with Communists, a destroyer of the rich, a breaker of our ancient traditions.

There is a solidarity and interdependence about the modern world, both technically and morally, which makes it impossible for any nation completely to isolate itself from economic and political upheavals in the rest of the world.

I certainly would not indicate a preference in a State primary merely because a candidate, otherwise liberal in outlook, had conscientiously differed with me on any single issue.

I should be far more concerned about the general attitude of a candidate toward present day problems and his own inward desire to get practical needs attended to in a practical way.

Sometimes the threat to popular government comes from political interests, sometimes from economic interests, sometimes we have to beat off all of them together.

The task on our part is twofold: First, as simple patriotism requires, to separate the false from the real issues; and, secondly, with facts and without rancor, to clarify the real problems for the American public.

Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.

Wise and prudent men - intelligent conservatives - have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.

A dark old world was devastated by wars between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race hatreds.

Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat. That's all.

Yes, we are on our way back - not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently.

Success in politics demands that you must take your people into confidence about your views and state them very clearly, very politely, very calmly, but nevertheless, state them openly.

There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.

Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent.

Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.

I wondered-not for the first time-whether one was ever justified in neglecting the welfare of one's own family in order to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be anything more important than looking after one's aging mother? Is politics merely a pretext for shirking one's responsibilities, an excuse for not being able to provide in the way one wanted?

I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one's birth, whether one acknowledges it or not.