Top 1200 American Political System Quotes & Sayings - Page 15

The enactment of the Homestead Act would create the strongest tie between the citizen and the Government-he would with cheerfulness contribute his proportionable part of the taxes to defray the expenses of the political system under which he lived.

There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.

Islam as a religion focuses primarily on the immutable aspects of life and existence, whereas a political system concerns only social aspects of our worldly life.

People should absolutely have a point of view about the political process themselves individually, but we're also at a point in the evolution of capitalism where any one individual's impacts are over estimated because there is enough regulation and guard rails. They may be odious and grotesque in what they say, but the practical day-to-day impacts from a policy perspective tend to be limited because the system made it so. That's why you see a lot of political apathy because people have internalized the inability for anyone either really really good or really really bad to do anything.

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.

You can't get votes that way. So [the Republicans] have been compelled to mobilize a base of voters and gone to elements of the country that have always been there but were kind of marginal to the political system, for example, religious extremists.

People have been tolerating their insane political system, in exchange for the countless privileges they are getting from their countries' plundering of the planet, and violating entire nations and continents. But in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, those "un-people" have no choice at all.

As more government functions are privatized, we find political leaders defunding the public school system, shifting government funds to the private, for-profit school industry.

One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting system, and impose some conditions. And then ask: can you have a voting system that guarantees that?

The problem in the Syrian opposition is not between Islamists and non-Islamists. It was the lack of any political experience after 50 years of no political experience. The problem was a lack of political organizations that are truly effective and powerful. This is still a challenge now; it is a weakness in the reality of Syrian political life.

It is a logical absurdity to equate democracy with freedom in the way that mainstream political philosophers and commentators typically do. A system where individuals and minorities are at the mercy of unconstrained majorities hardly constitutes freedom in any meaningful sense.

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

The Left, however, resists anglicizing Spanish terms because its political agenda relies on encouraging illegal immigration from Latin America and discouraging the assimilation of Hispanics into American society.

When I'm playing an American, I don't play Lennie with an American accent. They're American characters who look like me, but they have different voices.

What we need is a system of thought - you might even call it a religion - that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation.

Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties.

Our support for the Shah, the CIA coup in 1953 - has become infused into the Iranian political discourse. The regime that came to power in 1979 during the Iranian revolution actually defined itself as anti-American, and that's now a critical ingredient in the Iranian domestic political debate. That really is the source of our problems - the regime in Tehran continues to see itself as opposing the US. In their eyes, everything the US does is directed at them in a very malevolent way, and therefore they have to fight back against it.

We have to frankly break the back of the secular-socialist machine, elect people committed to representing the American people, and then methodically rip the system apart.

The GOP’s thirst for confrontation and crisis is symptomatic of a destructive and nihilistic streak that has overtaken our political system. When one party repudiates the whole concept of compromise, it is inevitable that the government will lurch from one crisis to another.

A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.

Politically, as a result of Citizens United, billionaires are now able to spend as much money as they want on campaigns, which means that you have a political system which is heavily dominated by corporations and wealthy individuals.

While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health.

It isn’t enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflecting this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

We have a complete void of progressive politics in this country right now. The will of the people goes ignored and unrealized. I'm searching for the people that can enter the political system, a strong third party. We need to consolidate.

Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

Some of these biggest financial institutions are out there trading in commodities. They're buying oil tankers. This is not a financial system that has calmed down and is there to serve the American people.

Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America.

Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move.

It is the members of this business elite . . . that pose the greatest danger to our American way of life. They are the ones who've bought and paid for members of both political parties. . . .

Amongst Western intelligentsia, to criticize if not loathe American values is viewed as progressive and liberal, whilst to support brutal and intolerant religious and political ideologies is a hallmark of being enlightened.

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.

The American people understand that we need real change in this country, in my view, a political revolution, which says to the people on top, "You know what, you guys can't have it all."

To have two separate game plans, you're asking for way too much of your team. That's why it's important to have quarterbacks that know your system, understand your system and have been a part of your system.

It's public knowledge that there have been efforts - as U.S. intelligence sources have said - by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system. I think that Canadians and, indeed, other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

When women and blacks were let in, the system didn't miss a beat. When gays are given their equality, the system will be as stable/unstable as it was before. And when animals are liberated one day, the world will be a beautiful place and the system will still function.

Whenever you have dynamic interactions between 300 million people and the American economy acting in really complex ways, that introduces a degree of almost chaos theory to the system, in a literal sense.

I'm comfortable, culturally I'm American, my perspectives are American, but from an aesthetic perspective do other people look at me and think that I'm American?

We have judges in the American system and they take on a black robe where they are supposed to shield their partisan preferences. They are not red or blue state judges. They are judges.

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.

If I was misogynist, would I hire a woman as my CEO? Probably not. I grew up in Denmark, for crying out loud. Denmark is probably one of the places where equality is actually fully achieved. Our political system is practically a matriarchy.

It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

I remember speaking to a sheik who came back into the political system in late 2008, laid down his arms. His troops became part of the Sons of Iraq, the so-called Sunni Awakening.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

We are creating a political demolition derby, not a presidential debate. Those strange impulses in the American soul that have produced mud wrestling and The Gong Show seem to have claimed the national campaign.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

The free electoral process is one of the things that outsiders envy most about this country. The distinctly American two-party system is perpetuated through that process.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

A team of British lawyers has now concluded that the Declaration of Independence was illegal, and the American colonies had no right to secede from England. Well, you thought our court system was backed up.

We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

The immigration system is broken and it needs to be fixed. And it needs to be fixed comprehensively, because this country depends on immigrant workers, but we don't have a system that reflects that. Our system is absolutely antiquated.

One of the more important things the Bernie Sanders campaign did is reach people who are political but not electorally political. They're political in either non-profits or community groups, but didn't see how important it was to get involved in electoral politics.

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.

People are really looking for greater sense of control of what happens in their lives, about the issues they really care about, and they feel that the political system doesn't necessarily deliver.

In a system that disproportionately harms poor people and people of color, too many Americans have lost faith in the essential American principle of equal justice under law.

The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.

China is never going to be a global model. Western system is really broken in some fundamental ways, but the Chinese system is not going to work either. It is a deeply unfair and immoral system where everything can be taken away from anyone in a split second.