Martin Jacques Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I pass no judgment about historic events. I defend the human freedoms. Whatever event has taken place throughout history, or hasn't taken place, I cannot judge that.
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The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite.
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The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have taken the biggest lurch to the left in policy in American history. There've been no - no Congress, no administration that has run this far to the left in such a small period of time. And there is a reaction to that.
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Our own CIA has a storied history of interfering in elections. In the late '40s, we shoveled cash into France and Italy after World War II to defeat the Communists who had been part of the wartime resistance to the Nazis and Fascists.
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The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.
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There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
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I was attending the University of Alberta. I was going to be a high school teacher, like my parents. I failed - no, I didn't fail a class, I just barely passed. I really didn't try. It was Canadian history, through the plays of the time. My God, those were boring plays.
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The right-wing of the Republican party isn't so much a political agenda as a plea for help.
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It takes heart to be in political life.
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Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.
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When students leave college, they are like children who know nothing about the problems of life, and don't have a political stance.
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One of the defining dynamics of 2008 has been the emerging wave of new, young voters getting involved and storming the gates of the traditional political establishment.
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The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family history. Each one of us has our past locked inside.
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The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.
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Artists are political in the sense that they've subtracted themselves from the structure of the marketplace and are contributing something that's not utilitarian. Even though books get sold, and I get advances, I get to look at society and think for a living.
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Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man.
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We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.
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If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
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There are hundreds of prisons - sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus.
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New experiences give you new perspectives on life.
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The Internet is an amazing development.
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I was a very shy and introverted person, and it was hard for me to talk to people and make relationships.
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As told in the final section of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour Christmas CD:
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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.
