Stephen Harper Quotes

There is no visible sign that the current politicians in the US are willing to see the need for change.

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

We have too many in Washington who are all too willing to just go along with the status quo and not make any waves.

Elections won't change anything in this country.

I think people are so disillusioned with the parties. It's one party with two different names, and they are so spineless.

I think we all have a tendency to feel like, "Well, what can I do? I can't influence the government or politics in my country."

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

I'd love to tell you that something is going to change tomorrow. But the reality is that it won't.

Young people are tremendously frustrated because they don't see politics as changing anything. They see it as perpetuating a system that frankly doesn't work and no matter who you vote for things don't really change. Social media is where I think a bold message will wake them up. We saw that a little bit in the Occupy movement. Over the next three years, I think young people are going to wake up and be empowered.

We're in a political depression - a great political depression

It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.

I think that in the West, many citizens, especially younger citizens, take their freedoms and institutions for granted and focus on their frustrations with their governments' inability to solve pressing problems.

The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.

Things are sullen, and will be as they are, whatever we think them or wish them to be.

Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

I think the leaders in all parties tend to adjust to reality. They just have to or they won't remain in office.

I do try to say, God’s will be done, sir,” said the Squire, looking up at Mr. Gibson for the first time, and speaking with more life in his voice; “but it’s harder to be resigned than happy people think.

To take the world as one finds it

The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it's the last humanizing force left in society, and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.

People are starving for that coming out of Washington. And it's not a Democrat thing or a Republican thing. I think it's a politician thing.

The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit.

There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible.

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.