Able Quote by Thomas Jefferson

Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence...politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.

— Bernard Crick

There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that…

— Abraham Lincoln

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in…

— Thomas Jefferson

Good politics are often inextricably intertwined.

— Anonymous

“The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values…

— Iain M. Banks

The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved…

— Jeane Kirkpatrick

Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go…

— Albert Camus

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties…

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A political philosophy (often called "political science" by practitioners who are not averse from verbal trickery) must deal with contemporary realities. If it does…

— Revilo P. Oliver

The principle of my political life ... is that all amelioration and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly…

— Daniel O'Connell

The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties,…

— David Mamet