Political Degradation Quotes

Direct primaries would destroy the party machinery ... and would build up a lot of personal machines, and would make every man a self-seeker, and would degrade politics by turning candidacies into bitter personal wrangles

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

It’s frightening. Our politics, because of him [Donald Trump], is defending to a level of a third world country. There’s just nothing beneath him.

We have seen a degradation from the highest levels of authority politically in this nation, including through the department of justice, for the rule of law.

I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.

The Senate has been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild, it would degrade men without tormenting them.

The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to degradation. . . . If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?

Over the years, our political system has degenerated to the extent that it is difficult for anyone to make any headway yet keep his hands clean.

For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again - which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough before.

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.

The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle...