Malcolm X Quotes

Politicians have responsibility to act if the public opinion changes.

People want a result. Immigrant voters aren't stupid, and they're going to know who's on their side.

I'm very much a believer that it's action that matters much more so than, you know, the flurry of political promises and statements and slogans that are used during political campaigns.

Only the people who elected the President -- only those people -- can determine the President's fate.

Is it not natural that a man who is a candidate for the favor of the people, and who is dependant on the suffrages of his fellow-citizens for the continuation of his public honors, should take care to inform himself of their dispositions and inclinations…? This dependant [creates] strong chords of sympathy between the Representative and the constituent.

There are two kinds of politicians, those who talk and promise and those who listen and do.

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?

In the democracy we live in today, it takes crisis to get the politics moving.

The first thing I would like to say is that I don't think folk at Westminster - or for that matter at Holyrood - constitute an elite. They are representatives who are elected and who are at the service of voters who can fire them.

If we don't send people to Washington who, first of all, have done something more than talk for a living - which is what many politicians have done - nothing gets done.

During their tenure, the elected representatives of the people walk with the gods. And it is only when an election is announced that they realise it is the people in their constituencies, with whom they have not really bothered to keep in touch, who will decide their fate.

Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.

Congress needs to step up. Congress needs to do their job, and Congress needs to do their job now.

It is not the business of politicians to please everyone.

And let me say this as a politician I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see.

Some major problems can be solved by our political process and our leaders. Others can be solved only when there is popular demand and insistence and politicians feel at risk of unemployment if they ignore the groundswell.

I have a somewhat sneaky way of effecting political change.

All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

I'm not very comfortable being an actorvist so to get to do something that I believe in is a much more comfortable way for me to be political.

Aren't we supposed to believe that if you are an elected official, if you serve in Congress, you are representing all the people of your district not just the people who voted for you, not [just] the people who you agree with?

The habit of going to your congressman's town hall and asking questions, that's powerful in a way that shouting slogans or getting arrested is not, that is completely counterproductive.

The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.

Imagining the overthrow of the current political system is the only way I can be enthused about politics.

In an odd way, Donald Trump and maybe Brexit is gonna be great for inspiring a new wave of socially conscious political music.