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"If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like."
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"The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. ['The grass was greener over there']"
"The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent."
"A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts."
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization."
"A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor."
"Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today's New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans. The "political revolution that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15."
"I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse."
Explore more quotes by Randall Jarrell
"I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose."
"In the United States, there one feels free... Except from the Americans - but every pearl has its oyster."
"A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times."
"It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life."
"I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry."
"One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child."
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