Political Stagnation Quotes

The two old parties … fight only for office. Observe how utterly both parties in this respect lack program and new leadership.

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

People are clamoring to hear good ideas as opposed to the lesser of two evils... Either the Democrats are going to win or the Republicans are going to win, but the losers are all of us out here as citizens that really do want meaningful change, and none of it's happening. There's no dialogue regarding meaningful change.

The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.

In terms of our democracy, we are sort of shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh dear, Guantánamo, that's so awful, that's so awful, but it's here. The pendulum usually swings from left to right and then right to left, but there are so many people in power who have taken the pendulum and just pinned it to the right that there is a fear that it's never going to swing back.

I think what Americans need and what Mainers need more than anything is government that functions and I think that the filibuster prevents us from functioning and making progress on issues.

That worst evil of long dictatorships: the loss of all political experience.

It is quite clear, however, that there won't be any real changes with the current clan structure having seized power in the course of the Karabakh conflict.

Many good people serve in Congress. They are patriotic, hard-working, and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before.

Given the slow pace of Washington's bureaucracy, policymakers are often busy solving yesterday's problems. This rearview mirror approach afflicts Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

The commonest error of politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.

The dominance of the conservatives during forty years created a unique political situation. It meant the preponderance of the executive branch of government over the legislative and tended to centralize power in the hands of a few. These few people in the seat of power began to be closely linked up with the equally small number of people controlling the business enterprises of the country. While, therefore, Japan as a nation was making a steady advance on the Asiatic mainland and in the world at large, the political conscience of the people itself was not given a needed chance to express itself. It gradually created an atmosphere of lamentable indifference to politics on the part of the majority of the people. They were not given suffrage to express themselves and even those few who had votes realized that the exercise of their power did not mean much in formulating the country's policy.

If a legislator is safe from competition, or if he represents groups with the same economic and political beliefs, he does not have to change his ideas or respond to the needs of the broader population. He can rest content with a mediocre, absentee performance knowing he will be returned to office. And as he is returned year after year the seniority system gives him immense control over people from other parts of the country whose views he need not heed at all.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

In the absence of a crisis, the status quo in Washington is more or less set in cement, as advocacy groups and turf-conscious government officials are able to thwart change.

People will pay a price for putting political obstruction over progress in a time that is so critical and urgent.

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

American government is like a train on a track. You have the people on the left shouting; you have the people on the right. But the train's on track. They just keep ploughing ahead.

I saw Sadat as a character out of Aida. He talked a lot but never acted. I didn’t take him seriously.

I believe we need new leadership to put the partisan gridlock behind us, and I promised my constituents I would vote for new leadership.

The European monarchs instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms

The House Republican leadership has simply run out of ideas.

Grass is growing on the Front Bench.