Political Transformation Quotes

Anyone who is not a liberal in his youth has no heart. Anyone who remains so as he matures has no brain!

Everyone is a liberal until they have something to conserve. Then they become a conservative.

The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.

All civilizations must go through four stages: The first stage is the emergence of a new civilization and society. The second stage covers a period of growth and prosperity. Stagnation and decadence characterize the third stage where wealth can no longer increase. This brings us to a fourth stage of decline leading to the ultimate collapse. Finally, a new civilization emerges from the ashes of the previous one and another cycle is born. The conditions of the world, and of the nations do not persist in one unchanging state but are transformed with the passage of time and move from one condition to another

I grew up as a Democrat in a very strong Democratic family, but I will tell you that the Democratic Party that exists in this country is not the Democratic Party I grew up around.

The generation which commences a revolution can rarely complete it

The Chinese millions have given the world the greatest revolution of modern times in the most civilized manner known to history. We have emancipated ourselves from the imperial yoke, not by brute force, but by sheer reasoning and unparalleled toleration. Within the amazingly short period of 4 months, and without shedding over one hundredth part of the blood that has been shed in other similar revolutions, we have transformed our immense country from an empire of 4,000 years standing into a modern democracy.

You have to understand that to have a revolution when you are 18 years old is completely different from normal political leaders who were born in a democracy and will die in a democracy and never to have experienced that change. I have seen that change.

A revolution is not an event. It's a process. And it takes its time.

She turned the President from a slob into a dude.

How did the party that elected the first black U.S. senator, the party that elected the first 20 African-American congressmen, how did that party become a party that now loses 95 percent of the black vote?

Politicon should be applauded for recognizing the increasing impact of technology, not only on American social and economic systems but on the very structure of our system of politics.

Billions of people around the globe had come to know Barack Obama, had heard his words, had watched his speeches, and, in some unknowable but irreducible way, had come to see the world as a place that could - in some incremental way - change.

I've been telling people, if we want to keep the Republican party in Texas, the Republican party in Texas needs to start looking like Texas. And I think that this is - that goes for the rest of the country as well.

The revolution starts now.

There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.

Look at South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. They still have many problems, setbacks as well as breakthroughs, but basically changes have happened that were considered unthinkable a decade ago.

Nothing is so common as to see a political upheaval pass practically unnoticed merely because the names of the leaders and their parties remain the same.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

Nelson Mandela went to jail believing in violence, and 27 years later he and his colleagues had slowly and carefully honed the skills, the incredible skills, that they needed to turn one of the most vicious governments the world has known into a democracy. And they did it in a total devotion to non-violence.

It is simply the truth that the political system that I am part of has degenerated to the point that it needs fundamental change.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.

Kennedy was like a rock star. Carter was the earnest outsider at the height of Washington cynicism. Clinton was a bad boy who proposed his 'third way' of Democratic politics, and Obama brought hope and change to a country that so desperately needed it.

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved.