Ursula K. LeGuin:

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable -- but then, so did the divine right of kings.

Winston Churchill:

The essential aspects of democracy are the freedom of the individual, within the framework of laws passed by Parliament, to order his life as he pleases, and the uniform enforcement of tribunals independent of the executive. As long as these rights are defended, the foundations of freedom are secure. I see no reason why democracies should not be able to defend themselves without sacrificing these fundamental values.

David Remnick:

Kleptocracies rarely value theoretical tracts. They value numbered accounts. They value the stability of their own arrangements.

David Brooks:

Data-driven politics assumes that demography is destiny, that the electorate is not best seen as a group of free-thinking citizens but as a collection of demographic slices. This method assumes that mobilization is more important than persuasion; that it is more important to target your likely supporters than to try to reframe debates or persuade the whole country.

John Fraser:

A sense of entitlement sits more naturally beside a sense of grievance than most people realize.

Robert Kaplan:

Unless Americans can be led back to an understanding of their enlightened self-interest, to see again how their fate is entangled with that of the world, then the prospects for a peaceful twenty-first century in which Americans and American principles can thrive will be bleak.

David Runciman:

People who think they can pick up politics when they need it often find that when they really need it they don't know where to find it. The professionals run rings round them. The only way to learn how to do politics is to keep on doing it, in good times as well as bad. We need more politics and we need more politicians.

David Cole:

Today, fully half of all members of Congress become lobbyists upon leaving office. Members of Congress spend 30–70 percent of their time raising money for their next campaign.

Matt McKenna:

We live in a country in which Congress has an approval rating of barely 15% and yet 95% of incumbents are reelected.

Nick Denton:

I came to this country because I thought it was something, you know? And yet I'm more in love with the idea of the United States than I am with the reality.

Megan Smith:

The American government will be whatever we all make of it.

Francis Fukuyama:

The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country's political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action.

Nicholas Carr:

Resistance is never futile. If the source of our vitality is, as Emerson taught us, "the active soul," then our highest obligation is to resist any force, whether institutional or commercial or technological, that would enfeeble or enervate the soul.