Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
Mark Twain
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Winston Churchill
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Otto Von Bismarck
When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.
I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Be polite; write diplomatically ;even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Voltaire
A witty saying proves nothing.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
Karl Marx
Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
To Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and allied terrorists,
Progressives in the US and around the world abhor you. We will defeat you.
We will defeat you by uniting the world against you rather than alienating our allies with unilateral arrogance. We will defeat you by maintaining a focused, cooperative hunt for criminals who have committed crimes against humanity. We will make stopping your operations an unrelenting preoccupation, and will not divert attention to preeemptive wars in pursuit of long pent-up political goals.
We will defeat you by ending the invasions that stoke anti-American hatred and provide you with fresh sources of new recruits. We will defeat you by finding a just resolution to the Palestinian conflict rather than endorsing the extremist policies of Ariel Sharon and his militaristic wing of the Israeli government. And we will defeat you by not forgetting our pledge of aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
We will defeat you by running a fact-based intelligence program, rather than a faith-based one, and by telling the truth to our own people and to the international community. We will not exact revenge against those who expose our lies by outing CIA agents engaged in stopping illicit weapons transfers.
We will defeat you by reversing past neglect of the nuclear stockpiles built up by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, which present your greatest opportunity to acquire nuclear implements. We will invest the funds and the effort required to secure and dispose of this material, placing it out of your reach forever.
We will defeat you by opposing all dictators and not allying with them when convenient. We will support movements for human rights throughout the world. We will stand in solidarity with those building local resistance to oppression. We will aid their efforts to create lasting, participatory democracy in their countries.
We will defeat you by standing up to weapons manufacturers and outlawing the sale of arms to tyrants. We will unequivocally back the principles of the Geneva Convention and will steadfastly work to end all torture. We will reaffirm the mechanisms of international law. We will end US opposition to the International Criminal Court, the Land Mine Treaty, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. We will recommit the US to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and support a strong UN Small Arms Agreement. We will live up to our commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to take honest steps toward nuclear disarmament, rather than building new and more powerful nuclear weapons.
We will defeat you by eliminating the conditions of inequality and desperation that aid your operations. We will provide real foreign aid to countries in need without demanding that they privatize their economies or allow our corporations to enter. We will create a system of trade based on fair labor standards and strong environmental protections, one that honors diversity and is responsive to human need. We will defeat you by fighting for a world without empire.
We will oppose what you believe in by promoting women's rights across the globe. We will offer assistance to local women's organizations and support active networks of civil society. We will respect reproductive freedom and lift the global gag rule that denies US aid to foreign health organizations that provide abortion counseling or referrals. We will promote societies that respect religious pluralism and will not advance theocratic crusades. We will stand for freedom of speech; we will oppose the criminalization of dissent; and we will not impugn the patriotism of those who would criticize our policies.
We will do all of this not for revenge, nor for power. We will not do this in the name of God, although it will be motivated by our deepest faith. We will do this simply for justice and peace, and for a safer world.
"Netpolitik is a new style of diplomacy that seeks to exploit the powerful capabilities of the Internet to shape politics, culture, values, and personal identity. But unlike Realpolitik — which seeks to advance a nation’s political interests through amoral coercion — Netpolitik traffics in “softer” issues such as moral legitimacy, culturalidentity, societal values, and public perception." - The Rise of Netpolitik
PUN-DIT (n) : A learned man; a teacher; a source of opinion; a critic: a political pundit.