Quotes About Politics & Society

Information is the currency of democracy.
-- Thomas Jefferson

There is no Energy Shortage. There is no Energy Crisis. There is a Crisis of Ignorance.
-- R Buckminster Fuller

To be a great politician you need the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
-- Winston Churchill

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russel

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-- Abraham Lincoln

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
-- George Bernard Shaw

All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
-- John Perry Barlow

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
-- Ambrose Bierce

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
-- Anatole France

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost

What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?
-- Henry David Thoreau

To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.
-- Albert Einstein

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
-- Albert Einstein

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.
-- Lily Tomlin

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I am certain that none of the world's problems have any hope of solution except through all of the world's individuals becoming thoroughly and comprehensively self-educated. Only then will society be able to identify, and intercommunicate, the vital problems of total world society. Only then may humanity effectively sort out and put those problems into an order of importance for solutions that will work for all life on Earth.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller