Doris Lessing on politics

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies.

I’m always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Kansas City Star (7 May 1918)

• America

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Winston Churchill1874–1965

Thus far, the reputed idiot Bush has graduated from Yale and Harvard, made a stack of cash in the oil industry, become the first consecutive-term governor of Texas, defeated a dual-term VP for the presidency, and led his party to [November 5th’s] extraordinary triumphs. Let his opponents keep calling him stupid; if they do, within five years Bush will be King of England, the Pope, and world Formula One motor racing champion.

Tim Blairborn 1965

• Clever Jabs