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"We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful."
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"Patriotism is the narcissism of countries."
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Personal Development
"Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions."
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Personal Development
"Some people had attack dogs. Ghastek had attack lawyers."
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Personal Development
"All authority belongs to the people."
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Personal Development
"A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards."
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Personal Development
"Communism, I observed, "is a pile of wank."
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Personal Development
"Help yourself with the state! It's on democracy!"
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Personal Development
"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee..."
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Personal Development
"Make them fear you. Machiavelli said it nearly six hundred years ago, but it's still true. Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job."
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Personal Development
"I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day."
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Personal Development
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"The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world."
Society
"That was what counted, she told herself: those unexpected moments of appreciation, unanticipated glimpses of beauty or kindness - any of the things that attached us to this world, that made us forget, even for a moment, its pain and its transience."
Life
"It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin."
Life
"The world was a vale of tears-it always had been."
Philosophy
"The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true."
Reflection
"And the memory made her humble, for we should not forget what it is to be young and to have ideas and attitudes that may later seem so fanciful."
Reflection
"Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams-it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain."
Philosophy
"She brought a chair into the room and placed it alongside the top of his bed. Then she held his hand as he drifted off to sleep. It was so small in her own hand, and it felt warm and dry. She pressed his hand gently, and his fingers returned the pressure, but only just, as he was almost asleep by then. She remembered, but not very well, what it was to fall asleep holding the hand of another; how precious such an experience, how fortunate those to whom it was vouchsafed by the gods of Friendship, or of Love. She thought she had forgotten that, but now she remembered."
Relationship
"Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so."
Literature
"Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks."
Sacrifice
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