James Connolly Quotes

Demagogues are so easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervour and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice. The practice can always be detected. Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words.

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.

The devil knew what he did when he made men politic; he crossed himself by it.

How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been two hundred years at it. It's superb.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.

How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation.

Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time...'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best.

Even Stalin proclaimed his love for democracy. We do not learn about the nature of systems of power by listening to their rhetoric.

When people don't want 'em, when they profit from the division, however, be it politically or financially, that's when I abhor it.

The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

The Admiral's using us," he says to the kids around him. "Don't you see that?" Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden's there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. "I'd rather be used whole than in pieces," Hayden says.

I often quote Hitler, who said words to the effect of, "Rulers are fortunate that the people do not think." Politicians know this. Even when the public seems to be upset, the politicians know if they can put on a brave face and ride it out, they generally will.

Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.

So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.

What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated!

The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

A veritable incubator of short cuts, schemes and devices to overcome the truth.

Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.

This is real. This is the real mad man theory. We have to be irrational and vindictive, so people don't know what we're up to. This is not [Donald] Trump and [Steve] Bannon, it's from the [Bill] Clinton era.

You know there's no crooked politicians. There's never a lie because there is never any truth.