Political Idealism Quotes

One novel that I think is an overriding influence in my life is 'All the King's Men,' the most beautiful book written in the U.S.

No man can do both effective and decent work in public life unless he is a practical politician on the one hand, and a sturdy believer in Sunday-school politics on the other. He must always strive manfully for the best, and yet, like Abraham Lincoln, must often resign himself to accept the best possible.

Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.

All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumble and begin to poke around for rumors of another Messiah.

Our modern politicians … claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral.

Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young, as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.

A politician’s task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible accord with the ideal and the principled.

I dreamed of being like Sam Seaborn on 'The West Wing'.

There was a time when I was enamored of the Clintons. I knocked on doors, phone-banked and rallied during his campaign.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed that government could help make our lives better, that public service was a calling and that citizenship demanded responsibilities. There was a greater good.

When I was very young and came into politics, I basically thought ideas would do the trick.

Politics is a romantic search for the good and the true and the beautiful.

Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson. He was a man of staunch morals. He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader.

The thing with 'The West Wing' is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality - these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

It's a fantasy that we could have a president who could actually make choices based on what's right, rather than having to weigh the political fallout. But that's sort of what we're showing. And you can dream.

Here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

Vain hope to make people happy by politics!

In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions.

I love The West Wing for many reasons. The show has been a fantasy. But we have offered a parallel universe to reality.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. "I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union."

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.