To me, a public servant should have both the grounding and the compassion to carry the common sense and good will of his or her neighbors into the political arena.
Kids aren't political, but around 10 years old, they are beginning to develop the moral grounding that might later, in their teens, develop into their first real political perspectives.
Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies.
Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual.
Obama's extraordinary political skills suggest he is more than capable of rising above any personal historical grudges he may have inherited.
As president, I won't just continue to defend women's civil rights from political attacks - I'll make guaranteeing those rights a priority.
Following well-established national security screening procedures and accurately informing Congress about them is not a joke or a political game. It is essential to guaranteeing that our national secrets are protected and to preventing possible blackmailing of key administration officials.
The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.
I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.
It's said that once you win an election, that you win political capital, and that's kind of my intent, is to spend political capital on the Gulf Coast, among other areas.
There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.
Hamas is a Palestinian political party with an aggressive militant wing.
The bottom line is that Daesh's defeat requires not just hammering them on the battlefield but, simultaneously, revived political reconciliation with Sunnis.
As political primaries approach, national media attention focuses on Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba.
Never underestimate the ability of political leaders to misread history on a monumental scale. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have both served to hasten western decline: they have both failed to achieve their objectives and in the process demonstrated an underlying western impotence.
I had assumed that Bush's seemingly inflexible policy to support Sharon was for political reasons of his getting elected. But as to whether he really believes his actions are going to hasten the day of the final conflict, I do not know.
