27 Quotes That Reflect Today’s America
The presidential election has crossed unprecedented boundaries.
Political experts predicted this as early as 2017. Today is the culmination day for their victimhood.
I am not an American citizen, nor am I an expert on political affairs. All I can observe is a series of ironies & satires — the direct descendants of despair of the masses.
So I invoke quotations — those powerful snippets of wit & wisdom, packed in one-liners.
If any of them manages to soothe your angst against the misdeeds of evildoers and inaction of do-gooders, it would be worth putting them together.
#27:
The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.
-Oscar Levant
#26:
I once said to my father, when I was a boy, ‘Dad we need a third political party.’ He said to me, ‘I’ll settle for a second.’
-Ralph Nader
#25:
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
-Gore Vidal
#24: (Almost a century before!)
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
-Joseph Stalin
#23:
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
-Dante Alighieri
#22: (Do-gooders, Do!)
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato
#21:
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
-Ernest Benn
#20:
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
-Noam Chomsky
#19:
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
-Mao Zedong
#18: (Even in COVID)
A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
-Caskie Stinnett
#17:
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
-Charles de Gaulle
#16:
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
#15:
We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.
-Kin Hubbard
#14:
A week is a long time in politics.
-Harold Wilson
#13:
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-E. B. White
#12:
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
-Ronald Reagan
(for the uninitiated, Mr. Reagan was referring to prostitution)
#11:
Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.
-Robert Kennedy
#10: (What’s unpalatable?)
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
#9:
Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.
-W. C. Fields
#8:
Voters don’t decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
-George Will
#7: (The inward-looking west)
If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don’t ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.
-Nelson Mandela
(No wonder, Barack Obama was inspired)
#6:
Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.
-Will Rogers
#5:
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
-Herbert Marcuse
#4: (Greeks. They always knew.)
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
-Pericles
#3:
Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
-Mario Puzo (author, The Godfather)
#2:
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-George Bernard Shaw
#1:
The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.
-Mahatma Gandhi
If this agitates you more than it amuses, have a slow, insightful cup of coffee. Don’t bother if you can’t change anything immediately.
It was designed this way, centuries ago. Here’s a bonus one:
Man is by nature a political animal.
-Aristotle
