Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

At a certain point, even if the one alpha male is dominant, at a certain point there's a younger lion that is stronger, and everyone knows it.

For about ten years now, the struggle for democracy and the respect of human rights has been in the focus point - if not a commodity - of political groups aiming to rise to power.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

And after I make a lot of money, I'll be able to afford running for office.

Politics is a contact sport.

I had spent many days hungry; had slept on railway stations at times because I did not have money to pay for a hotel room... there were moments when I felt I had compromised my dignity as a human being and as an actor.

These guys were the real owners of the country, and for them to discuss with this young guy who becomes a member of the government was absolutely unacceptable.

In 1559, Duke Frederick III was summoned before the Emperor Ferdinand I at Breslau to answer the accusations of extravagance and oppression brought against him by the Silesian Estates and was deposed, imprisoned, and his son Henry XI given the Ducal crown instead.

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

Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.

Washington [DC] is a zero sum place.

Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a change in the political constitution cannot be durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself

For the politician the goal is always to be in the government.... Everything is about the struggle for office. The purpose of power, the problem to solve, is forgotten.

In the final analysis, politics is a game of force, in which no weakling may expect to be assigned a conspicuous role.

The stability of medieval society depended on the fixity of all of its parts, as that of modern society is on their mobility.

England, you know, hath been conquered and enslaved divers times, and the best laws that England hath (viz Magna Charta) were got by our forefathers’ importunate petitioning unto the kings, that still were their task-masters; and yet these best laws are yokes and manacles, tying one sort of people to be slaves to another...

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups.

Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as means, and not as ends.

The monarchy and aristocracy have all possible motives for endeavoring to obtain unlimited power over the persons and property of the community. The consequence is inevitable: they have all possible motives for combining to obtain that power.

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power

Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history.

I was not a girl who grew up buying $100 candles. I was the girl who ran out of gas on her way to an audition.