I am convinced that the luckiest of geographic circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in despite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances and the worst laws to advantage. The importance of mores is a universal trust to which study and experience continually bring us back.
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the ultimate test of a moral society is the world that it leaves to its children. When I think of how we’re passing on unthinkable taxes and debts, and slipping our kids and grandkids the check, I say we are failing that moral test.
Author: Pete Peterson | Subjects: Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Politics & Public Policy
In our stroke for independence we struck a blow for all the world. Some men saw it then; all men see it now […] Let us ponder our duties like men of conscience and temper our ambitions like men who seek to serve, not to subdue, the world; let us lift our thoughts to the level of the great tasks that await us, and bring … [ Read more ]
Author: Woodrow Wilson | Subjects: America, Foreign Policy
We’re very good at saying we want to create a gender-sensitive, multiethnic centralized government based on human rights, policy, and law. But we’re very bad at deciding at what cost and in what time frame. Are we prepared to empower a provincial warlord to keep security for five years while we get our act together? Are we prepared to allow drug cultivation to continue because … [ Read more ]
Author: Rory Stewart | Subject: Foreign Policy
War is nothing about reason and everything about emotion. If it has logic, it is the mad logic of hell. All of us have some evil: deep in most, indulged by a few, universally released by war. Men sign away everything for this release, uncapping a pot they scarcely know is boiling, and then are haunted ever after.
Author: William Dietrich | Subjects: Life & Society, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
Under totalitarianism, it is said, many things are forbidden and the remaining things you must do; under authoritarianism, many things are forbidden and the remaining things you may do.
Author: Ross Terrill | Subjects: Freedom | Liberty, Politics & Public Policy
I think it [allowing foreign policy to be defined by the war on terrorism] would be tragically self-limiting. I think the U.S. has far bigger and larger issues in the world that it needs to be concerned with. I believe this issue remains vital. I believe that all the instruments of state that are being applied to prevent the next 9/11—and to take action against … [ Read more ]
Author: Shashi Tharoor | Subjects: America, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy
With exceptions so rare that they are regarded as miracles and freaks of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular—not whether it will work … [ Read more ]
Author: Walter Lippmann | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life—the children; those who are in the twilight of life—the elderly; and those in the shadows of life—the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.
Author: Hubert humphrey | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.
Author: John F. Kennedy | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Power
Government, although representing the will of the people in a mechanical sense, can not possibly give expression to a nation’s soul. Only the voluntary, spontaneous activity of the people themselves — as expressed in their art, literature, science, education, and religion — can adequately provide a complete cultural portrait.
Author: Frank Ninkovich | Subjects: Culture, International, Politics & Public Policy
You cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among
religious believers.
Author: John Adams | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Religion
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
Author: Caskie Stinnett | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Diplomacy can be described as the art of being stubborn, arbitrary, and unreasonable without arousing emotional responses.
Author: Bruce D. Henderson | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
Author: Margaret Mead | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Politics & Public Policy
An anarchist wants to stir things up for no particular outcome. A terrorist may have a cause but not know how to pursue the cause within the boundaries of society. But an activist is someone who can work within the boundaries to make change happen.
Author: Gary Hamel | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Terrorism
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
Author: Winston Churchill | Subjects: America, Politics & Public Policy
I do not believe the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion in which it will be politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right … [ Read more ]
Author: Milton Friedman | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Yes, democracy is the rule of the majority; but there liberalism must enter. Majority rule must be tempered by the rights of minorities and of individual men and women; but when that temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing else than populism. More precisely: then it is nationalist populism. It may be that the degeneration of liberal democracy to populism will … [ Read more ]
Author: John Lukacs | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The ultimate test of the validity of claimed human rights is whether they survive uninhibited, informed discussion and scrutiny, not merely in one society but “across national boundaries.” As Adam Smith once wrote, ethical scrutiny requires examining moral beliefs from “a certain distance.”
Author: Amartya Sen | Subjects: Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Philosophy, Politics & Public Policy