Power Politics Quotes

“If you are my food, how am I supposed to feel pity towards you? That would mean starvation for me. “A hungry leopard told a fallen, panting, imploring gazelle”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Once you are in power, never forget those who put you there. Deal with those who think they can do better than you and those who think you are god's representative on earth. Deal with each other according to his actions”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“It is true that those of us who have political experience could wrestle for power just as any other politician. But we have no time; we have more important things to do. And there is no doubt that the knowledge we hold to be sacred would be lost in the process. To acquire power, millions of people have to be fed illusions. This too is true: Lenin won over millions of Russian peasants, without whom the Russian Revolution would have been impossible, with a slogan which was at variance with the basic collective tendencies of the Russian party. The slogan was: "Take the land of the large land-owners. It is to be your individual property." And the peasants followed. They would not have offered their allegiance if they had been told in 1917 that this land would one day be collectivized. The truth of this is attested to by the bitter fight for the collectivization of Russian agriculture around 1930. In social life there are degrees of power and degrees of falsity. The more the masses of people adhere to truth, the less power-mongering there will be; the more imbued with irrational illusions the masses of people are, the more widespread and brutal individual power-mongering will be.”
― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

“Arendt's point is rather that throughout modern German history Jews were pawns, more or less and almost necessarily willing pawns, in the game of power politics. They were used by the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the liberals, and discarded by each of those opposed factions when their usefulness, which was financial, was either used up or no longer deemed socially desirable.”
― Jerome Kohn, The Jewish Writings

“Who would have thought wearing masks would turn out to be a symbol of liberalism? Who would have thought that masks would be debated so vigorously on par with immigration, tax and foreign policy?”
― Surya Sree

“It is the pursuit and attainment of political party power that divides and defines a nation. Not race, not religion, not national origin, not color, not gender, not socioeconomic status, nor sexual orientation, no these are all just sacrificial pawns of the political arena. If you want to know where common sense goes to die and where tribalism goes to be born, look no further than party politics.”
― Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence

“Millions of Americans, even in the middle of a war, were unwilling to accept what they called "power politics" as an international way of life.

This feeling could not be faulted in American moral terms. But its existence showed a remarkable misunderstanding of the world's peoples and governments. Too many Americans still saw the world at large in American terms, or considered the aims, morals, aspirations, and ideals of the English-speaking nations as universal. The man in Zanzibar was not much different from the man in Zanesville, Ohio, to this school of thought; therefore a consensus could easily be reached between the two. The same people tended to regard Hitler and Nazism not as recognizable human manifestations, but as some kind of aberration. Their rejection of history, including their own, was profound.”
― T. R. Fehrenbach

“But the reliance on national power and "power politics" as the basis of the new League by the professionals inside the State Department - and the emotional rejection of both by millions of people unconnected with the realities of government - created a dichotomy between professional government and the American citizenry that was to grow over the next twenty years.”
― T. R. Fehrenbach