Joan Kirner Quotes

Politics is an instrument that can transform society.

If we give up on politics, we're done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

You can’t win if you don’t play. The people who get involved in politics are more likely to get their way.

I don't think that people are disinterested or uninterested in politics. I think very often they are disengaged from the formal political process. To some extent they are suspicious or even despairing of formal politics as a means to give expression and effect to what they want.

I am not a politician... I only suffer the consequences.

I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

Young people have so much more power than they tend to think to be able to affect politics. And if people will organize and get involved and go out and knock on doors and hand out leaflets and make a change, then they can determine the future.

You don't choose a party because it's the flavour of the month. I feel I will be able to work under a political system. I feel if people like me don't enter politics to bring change, who will?

I think politics is the biggest lever of change in India.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

You can get from a politician whatever you demand in this country. The great irony is that everybody complains about how it runs but not enough people direct their force and power directly at the politicians and make demands upon them. Ours is a system that abhors remoteness. If you're remote from this political system, it'll kill you.

The political graveyards are full of people who don't respond.

I'm political in the sense that there's much to be done, but I'm apolitical in the sense that I don't think there's a party that represents anything I believe in.

If you want to change things, politics is the best way to do that.

I have a certain sympathy with politicians having lived with one. I've seen how no matter how earnest or driven or energetic they are, it's still difficult to change things. I have been encouraged to go into politics, but I don't think I could make a contribution, it suits me better to be sniping from the sidelines.

You would be naive to suggest that politics isn't complicated or isn't a game, but you don't create change through cynicism.

There's no point in getting into politics at all unless you plan to lash things around.

I think that people are tired. They're tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

My personal take on politics is I deal with social situations and cultural situations in my music and in my life. I have said on record many times that I haven't voted. I'm not the type of person who says, 'I'm never going to vote.' I think it's clear to me that our system has failed us.

People feel politics isn't about their lives.

I'm not a politician or political animal.

Whenever anybody gets involved in politics, its always exciting for me because we take for granted our freedoms and our abilities to effect change through political activism.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.