Francisco Goldman Quotes

Without the truth of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void.

A democratic government in South Africa is not a threat to white people.

The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.

Coming from Donald Trump, who pushed the racist birth conspiracy theory for years against Barack Obama, I think Barack Obama has been very much a gentleman. And he has a lot of reason to just not even bother to deal with Trump.

When everyone is part of the people's congress, what need is there for an opposition? Opposition to what? You oppose a government! If there is no government, and the people govern themselves on their own, what are they going to oppose? Something that isn't there?

Did you see the 2000 Republican Presidential Convention? The last time the Republicans had that many Black people on a stage, they were selling them!

We can't continue assuming that politics is something which is decided elsewhere by distant leaders in a distant capital. Protest is insufficient too. If people who are willing to put time into demonstrations also prove willing to work on behalf of candidates in local elections - or to become candidates themselves - they will achieve far more. If all of this upheaval provokes more involvement, then we have a slim chance of ending up with more vibrant democracies eventually. The alternative, as you've hinted, is that democracy fails altogether.

If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.

The issues in America are so big, and the problems are enormously complicated. But I am incredibly confident in Donald Trump to be able to execute on his promise to the people who elected him.

[Donald Trump] has nothing to show for it but fear in every way. To people who are sick, fear, to people who are immigrants, fear, to people who are concerned about the greed on Wall Street taking us back to where we were.

None of this seems to affect the leadership, that people don't go out to vote, that they don't feel the need to go vote, that they already feel disenfranchised. It's not just Obama's fault or Clinton's or whomever's, it's all of them, the whole collection of clowns I've had to sit through.

We have got to go and compete for the minds and the hearts and the votes of everybody in this country, no matter who they are. And what I think we've had is one party takes a group of people for granted and another party has not paid attention to them.

[People] just don't seem to want to give [Donald Trump] any kind of berth at all, let alone a wide berth, to govern.

I want young people to be involved, and I especially want young people to vote.

Donald Trump always puts himself first. He built a business career, in the words of one of his own campaign staffers, "off the backs of the little guy." And as a candidate, he started his campaign with a speech where he called Mexicans rapists and criminals, and he has pursued the discredited and really outrageous lie that President Obama wasn't born in the United States. It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African-American could not be a citizen of the United States.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

I think that different leaders, whether it's Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or Paul Ryan, saying that we're not going to turn on each other, which is exactly what ISIS wants. I think that's what this moment calls for and I think, right now, you see who are the pandering demagogues, and who are the people who really have a higher standard and the best public interest at heart.

I think that the society and our democracy are mature enough to place emphasis on the quality and the value of the individual politician, rather than their gender. Some people will find it fashionable to have a woman leader, but I think the reason people chose me as the leader of this country is because my policies and my values suit the needs of Taiwan today. We represent people who want to have change in the society.

I have constantly told people that I was Secretary of State and I was not going to get into a partisan debate. And I would vote my ballot in a secret way, as all Americans do. But I just want to acknowledge that after the election took place, it was a special time for Americans.

It is difficult to find another branch of knowledge where a small amount of study produces such great results in increased efficiency in a country where the people rule, as in parliamentary law.

Donald Trump has spent his entire campaign offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

Donald Trump, I hate to tell people who are concerned about it, is not going to be impeached. The American people believe in giving somebody a fair chance. He's a new president. There have been troubles, there have been problems.

Someone wrote in the New York Times recently that if Donald Trump was allowed to go through with his plans, he'd become one of history's major human rights violators and ethnic cleansers, just below the Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin league. But people don't care. Trump goes on Jimmy Fallon's show and that spineless puff of a talk show host praises Trump for being such an "off the cuff" talker and providing "fresh air." Fresh air! What's fresh about racism? it comes out of the darkest dankest rottenest human cellar!

It is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the people.

We're seeing is young people who are optimistic, who want a future, want our constitutional rights, are coming to our campaign.