Gwen Ifill Quotes

This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged.

Yet it seems that a final race struggle is unavoidable

At the heart of the fractured soul of America is the frightening chasm of race.

This is why integration will not work. It assumes that the two races, black and white, are equal and can be made to live as one. This is not true.

Shia leaders prefer to keep Iraq united, as long as they maintain their dominance over it, especially now that they have been portrayed as the majority who suffered injustice and oppression over the years. Hence, the atmospheres have been prepared and charged by the American agents to hand the reins of power to the “Shias” or to hold the lion’s share.

I need to get everything straight. I'm not involved in a power struggle between black and white.

Race remains a significant challenge in America.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

There is no doubt that the issue of race is always present in American politics and in the politics of any multiracial society. There is also no doubt that for some people it is an element in the manifested hostility to Obama. But I don't think it is the major theme at all. Obama is right when he reminds people: By the way, I was black before the election.

There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.

I think there's a racial outcome to a lot of what goes in America, but I don't think race is always the reason.

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.

In a confrontation with the politics of power, the soft center has always melted away.

I think to be in politics you have to have the taste for blood on that.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar.

In the end, civil wars are about the distribution of power.

Because of unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, [freed slaves] never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country.

While the politicians fight for place and power, what of the destinies of the common people, in whose name and for whose alleged benefit the contending factions appeal to the world at large?

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

It’s time we faced facts. Southern people just don’t like Black people.

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

Rebellions broke out, from the full-scale political revolution of Dorr’s rebellion in Rhode Island to urban violence and protest, often by out of work whites taking out their anger on African Americans or Irish Americans. In response, leaders had to come to terms with the role of force in a democracy.

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

It is no secret that Washington, D.C., is a tempest of people and institutions relentlessly seeking power over the lives of everyday Americans.