E. Belfort Bax Quotes

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

The attempt to turn a complex problem of the head into a simple moral question for the heart to answer, is of course a necessary part of all political discussion.

Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning..

Most centrist Democrats... try to distance themselves from controversies that recall the 1960s. There are journalistic centrists as well, who avoid hard truths for the sake of acceptance and legitimacy.

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

There is a segment of the right that doesn't care about winning, what I call zealotry masquerading as principle.

The menace is ideology, the dogma of politics. It is a prison that makes the American experiment impossible.

No political cliche can stand up to reality.

I was a Socialist for two weeks but when a couple of Socialists assured me I had no right to think differently from any other Socialist and then quarreled with each other about what Socialism meant, I ran away.

Hardly a man came out of wartime Washington whose ways of thinking were not profoundly influenced by that environment. The liberal tenets had become a dogma that a man questioned at his peril.

Politics consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all.

Whoever ventures to attack a system received so generally, and supported by so great a weight of authority, is exposed to various evils. They who have embraced its principles are apt to slight and neglect, or, if that may not he, to conceive it their business to overthrow the heterodox doctrines. What of error they may contain is eagerly seized on, what of truth, is overlooked.

Every intellectual attitude is latently political.

Vision is not political rhetoric

Principles aren't something you hear much from politicians these days. Have you noticed? Right across the board, leaders, whatever the political coloring, avoid talking about laws; they avoid talking about principles. They talk about 'our values.' But values can change, and all our packets of 'values' seem to be getting smaller.

I don't believe in populism.

A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.

If you organize your life around some political party's list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay.

I think 'The East' is political.

I really believe that anybody on the Left or the Right that tries to invoke the teachings of Jesus to say they should vote for this candidate or that candidate, I think they're stretching Scripture.

I think those who have followed my political life would have known that I don't believe in just blind loyalty.

The arrogance of the Left always fascinates me.

For the Left, Thanksgiving is about politics; for the Right, politics is about thanksgiving. The different approaches to holiday conversation come from opposing views of politics.