A Quote by Edward Abbey

In history-as-politics, the 'future' is that vacuum in time waiting to be filled with the antics of statesmen.

Edward Abbey

Quote Topics

Antics Filled Future History Politics Statesmen Time Vacuum Waiting

Quote Author

Edward Abbey
American - Author
January 29, 1927 - March 14, 1989

Statesmen think in terms of history and view society as an organism. Prophets are different since they believe absolute aims can be achieved in the foreseeable future. More people have been killed by crusaders than by statesmen.

Henry A. Kissinger

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

Naomi Klein

Nature abhors a vacuum, even in the heads of statesmen.

Clare Boothe Luce

Whenever you exclude God and the value system that He represents out of the equation of a life, of a family, or a culture, you create a spiritual vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. It must be filled with something.

Tony Evans

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

Mark McKinnon

I worry about the future of this country for our kids and grandkids and America not being on the world stage and that vacuum being filled by the likes of Vladimir Putin.

Sean Hannity

I have spent probably years of time waiting in studio lounges - waiting on a mix, waiting on my time to sing, waiting on, waiting on, waiting on. That's just the nature of life.

Amy Grant

Nature hates vacuum. Once a society is depleted of moral values, it creates a vacuum that will be filled by doctrines that hold to such values, even though those values are draconian and oppressive. In fact the more a society is devoid of morality, the more promising prudish and unpermissive doctrines look. Licentious societies create a spiritual vacuum that legalistic religions such as Islam fill.

Ali Sina

I think now it's a very odd time in politics. It should be mostly about good governing. We need a government, not politics. Because there's too much politics. Of course there should be debate. But there seems to be so much pettiness and not enough good faith. It is civilized to agree to disagree and this idea is slowly disintegrating. The great statesmen of the past knew this, and I think it helps drive civilization.

Daphne Guinness

Jonathan Meese is not interested in the history of reality. Everything radical and precisely graphic is sustainable. Human ideologies like religions and politics are based on the past and therefore irrelevant to art. Art always transforms radicalism of the past into the future. Art is always the total time machine. Jonathan Meese is interested in the history of the future. Art is never nostalgic.

Jonathan Meese

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

John Kenneth Galbraith

I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.

Ernest Hemingway

History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

Toshiko Kishida

We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time,or as the greatest criminals

Joseph Goebbels

The stuff that I have perhaps become known for that's based on fact, and English statesmen shouting at each other all the time, doesn't entirely represent who I am. I am not a politics wonk.