The way to bring about change is to be proactive and active. — Octavia Spencer
Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life. — Rebecca Solnit
There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics. — Paul Wellstone
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction. — Will Rogers
Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. — Felix Frankfurter
Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws. — Robert Peel
When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. — Barack Obama
Actions lie louder than words. — Carolyn Wells
Military action without politics is like a tree without a root. — Ho Chi Minh
Those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action. — Nicolas Cage
Political Action Image Quotes
One day, you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the thing you've always wanted. Do it now.
Political Winning Quotes
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett
The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power. — Robert H. Jackson
Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. — Paul Wellstone
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes. — John Podhoretz
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. — Ayn Rand
Men who have changed the world never achieved their success by winning the chief citizens to their side, but always by stirring the masses. — Napoleon Bonaparte
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics. — David Miliband
I've been watching politics for 35 or 40 years and you just never know. You can have one person win the Iowa caucus and then the whole picture changes ten minutes later. The same thing can happen again after New Hampshire. I have no idea what's going to happen with our country in the future. — Jackie Mason
Much as I would have liked to respond factually and truthfully to each and every piece of misinformation spread by the Brexit campaign, it was important that I stayed out of the domestic political debate. It was David Cameron's task to win the UK referendum, not ours. — Jean-Claude Juncker
Revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society, and without them it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. — Mao Zedong
What Are Political Actions Quotes
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. — Thomas Jefferson
In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter. — David Horowitz
Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States. — William Blum
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it's now or never.
If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse, mine are words, his was action. This is what he has done to women. Never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women, so you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women. — Donald Trump
Political Activism Quotes
The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people. — Bernie Sanders
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. — Voltaire
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. — Voltaire
Self-control is strength. Calmness is mastery. You have to get to a point where your mood doesn't shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else. Don't allow others to control the direction of your life. Don't allow your emotions to overpower your intelligence.
My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax. — Nicola Sturgeon
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. — Robert Nozick
Success doesn't come from what you do occasionally, but what you do consistently.
Activists need to educate themselves about the power of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, invented in 2009, and use crypto to leverage the success of their independent media gains to tip the balance of power away from the troika in ways that could never happen by backing a political candidate. — Max Keiser
Social etiquette dictates that when in mixed company, one should avoid discussing politics and religion. As someone who is quite active on various social portals, I can attest to the visceral emotions that are triggered when these topics are broached! — Gad Saad
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. — Barack Obama
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology. — H. L. Mencken
Social Action Quotes
No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. — Joseph Brant
The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order. — Gustavo Gutiérrez
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
Our brains don’t just process and understand the actions and words of others but their feelings and intentions too, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions. — Chris Voss
Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism. — Philip Zimbardo
Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action. — Malcolm Fraser
No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.
The gospel is not about... pie-in-the-sky when they die. ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world.... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action. — Tony Campolo
No one is moved to act, or resolves to speak a single word, who does not hope by means of this action or word to release anxiety from his spirit. — Ibn Hazm
Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement. — Patricia Hill Collins
Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Political Involvement Quotes
Now is the time to alter our government. Now is the time to stop the movement toward oligarchy. Now is the time to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the 1%... No more excuses. We must all become involved in the political process. — Bernie Sanders
The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others. — Judith Martin
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. — John W. Gardner
The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.
The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. — Benito Mussolini
Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. — Joseph Stiglitz
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. — James Harvey Robinson
There is no difference between religion and politics. Both involve lies and fanatical beliefs that generaly defy logic... Just like rock climbing. — David Schuller
Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them. — Shirley Chisholm
Fascism is not just a word. It`s not just a way to insult someone with whom you disagree. It is a specific thing. It is a specific form of far right politics that involves a sort of narcissistic cult of superman action around the leader of the party. — Rachel Maddow
Political Campaign Quotes
What my campaign is about is a political revolution - millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the hand full of billionaires. — Bernie Sanders
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. — Lyndon B. Johnson
I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan
Ask yourself if what you're doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.
The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite
Any politician or campaigner trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public won't get very far. — Nicola Sturgeon
Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election. — Olympia Snowe
I happen to think that conservatism, when properly applied to the 21st century, could actually help everybody. And the message of Trump's campaign was obviously not super-appealing to Latino Americans, black Americans and so forth. That really bothered me. — James David Vance
But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating. — Robert McChesney
But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating. — Robert Waterman McChesney
Campaigning in Wyoming is politics at its most retail level. It's done one voter at a time. — Mary Cheney
Political Engagement Quotes
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. — Thomas Ehrlich
Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. — Andrew Carnegie
Our ability to effectively engage China and the Arab world rests on shared economic and political interests and mutual understanding. — Rick Larsen
Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged... 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is all wrong. I tell you 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.' — Andrew Carnegie
Any clear-thinking person should be able to engage in nuanced thinking when it comes to complex political positions. — Gad Saad
Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism. — Alain Badiou
I am ready to have dialogue with the concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement. — Mwai Kibaki
When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere. — Calvin Trillin
A better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter. — Michael Sandel
Political Election Quotes
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. — Abraham Lincoln
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times. — Mark Twain
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S Truman
A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932 ... and 50 million people died as a result ... what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important. — Bernie Sanders
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. — Gerald R. Ford
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S. Truman
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind. — Thomas Sowell
We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day. — Ann Richards
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. — George Macdonald
Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected. — Thomas Sowell
Community Action Quotes
We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock. — Queen Elizabeth II
The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members. — Coretta Scott King
We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously. — Grace Lee Boggs
We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons. — Daniel Berrigan
Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes. — Victor Hugo
I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic. — Studs Terkel
Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. — Mother Teresa
In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions. — Jared Diamond
We love the ability of the people to influence the actions of decision-makers, of lawmakers and presidents to be removed from or elevated to office by the will of voters, and of the community to connect amongst diverse populations through the ballot box. — Charles Rangel
When we find inspiration, we need to take action for ourselves and for our communities. Even if it means making a hard choice, or cutting out something and leaving it in your past. — Aron Ralston
Political Participation Quotes
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. — Frederic Bastiat
Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organisation. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee
People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton. — James David Vance
Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region. — Frank Carlucci
When we get a chance to take part in elections, I am ready to fight for leading positions, including in the presidential vote. — Alexei Navalny
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis
Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part. — Michael Manley
Maybe democrats will eventually turn on Obamacare when they realize you might need a photo I.D. to participate in the program. — Dennis Miller
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? — Barack Obama
It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result. — Mahatma Gandhi
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Hollywood is in control of politics and has imported their action-filled movie scripts into the real world. — Kim Dotcom
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. — Vaclav Havel
I have met with political leaders, legislators, and diplomats, seeking the next steps to press in reducing and eliminating the nuclear threat in this century. I have participated in public coalitions developing programmes for action to combat the global rash of small arms. All are trying and making a difference. — Michael Douglas
The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics – novel not just for Russia but for most of the world – a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre. — Stephen Kotkin
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind. — Toni Morrison
The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers. — Henry Clay
Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman
The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. — Carl Schmitt
Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack. — Soong May-ling
If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action. — Ulrike Meinhof
Sometimes it appears that we're reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of the Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action. — Spiro T. Agnew
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. — John Roberts
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation. — Cesar Chavez
When we speak of power, we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large. — Hans Morgenthau
All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse. — Leo Strauss
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. — Milton Friedman
What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through. — Voltairine de Cleyre
When the goal of political action is no longer the defense of liberty, no word other than demagoguery can describe the despicable nature of politics. — Ron Paul
I think, you know, architecture should not just be something that follows up on events but be a leader of events ... by implementing an architectural action, you actually are making a transformation in the social fabric and in the political fabric. Architecture becomes an instigator. — Lebbeus Woods
Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth.... Architecture aims at Eternity. — Christopher Wren
The real Art of Peace is not to sacrifice a single one of your warriors to defeat an enemy. Vanquish your foes by always keeping yourself in a safe and unassailable position; then no one will suffer any losses. The Way of a Warrior, the Art of Politics, is to stop trouble before it starts. It consists in defeating your adversaries spiritually by making them realize the folly of their actions. The Way of a Warrior is to establish harmony. — Morihei Ueshiba
Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place. — Harold Washington
There is a weapon we can fight with. That is the weapon of political action. — Harry Bridges
If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it. — George W. Bush
Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action. — Michael Parenti
Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do. — Aldous Huxley
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner. — James Fenimore Cooper
The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. The political concept of the individual's freedom means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power. — Ludwig von Mises
Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. — Patrick Lencioni
It seems to me it would be pretty awful if Canadians came to choose political leaders not for their political ideas and actions, but because of their adherence or their devotedness to one faith or another. — Pierre Trudeau
The fundamental principle of human action, the law, that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion — Henry George
Voting is the foundation stone for political action. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
To me, political action involves making the politician who represents us know that he either produces or he is out, and he's out one way or another. — Malcolm X
The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action. — Ayn Rand
Capitalism's biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action. — Raghuram Rajan
I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing. — Jim Wallis
Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions. — John Rawls
Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles. — Mahatma Gandhi
In Conclusion
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