Mason Cooley Quotes

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed.

Slowly, ideas lead to ideology, lead to policies that lead to actions.

Politics is the chloroform of the Irish people, or rather the hashish.

Socialism and communism are now so near each other that there is hardly any difference between them. In the past they differed from each other as does liberalism from democracy

The victories of the New Deal didn't happen just because suddenly everybody understood the brutalities of laissez-faire. This was a time, let's remember, of tremendous ideological ferment, when many different ideas about how to organize societies did battle with one another in the public square. A time when humanity dared to dream big about different kinds of futures, many of them organized along radically egalitarian lines. Now, not all of these ideas were good but this was an era of explosive imagining. This meant that the movements demanding change knew what they were against -- crushing poverty, widening inequality -- but just as important, they knew what they were for. They had their "no" and they had their "yes," too. They also had very different models of political organization than we do today.

I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky ... by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man.

The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.

To be honest, politics is so weird. I think it's more heavy than religion.

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development, entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance.

Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, discovery of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.

Liberalism has never done as well as it thinks at resolving its own crises.

You know the voice of the people is a very, very powerful tool.

Every once in a while, an election comes along, and who you are and what you believe gets subsumed in a larger tide. It just happens.

Political culture has become popular culture.

The inertia of the governed cannot be disentangled from the indifference of the government. American leaders have both a circular and a deliberate relationship to public opinion.

That's what politics is. It's the story of what's happening, what does it mean, what's the conclusion, who are the interesting characters?

Everywhere, you have a fatigue for reform... that's very serious.

Political shenanigans come and go, yet often what feels like a big deal in Westminster fails to get a mention on the news. As a result, the public wisely let most of the hurly-burly of politics wash over their heads.

Governments do not care about your Facebook-assembled opinion. Incompetent politicians don't read your tweets; there are reasons for them being out of touch. Change does not come about for 'likes' on a page, though the ideas for it may start there.

I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don't think art is the most effective form of protest. I don't think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that's what it's about: having that space for conversation.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

I think democracy is not a destination. I don't think socialism is a railway station and if we catch the right train with the right driver, we'll get there. I think it's a way of thinking about things and every generation has to do it again.

Most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.