65 Quotes About Populism

Help yourself with the state! It's on democracy!

Change - I beg you - change for your children - for their health, sanity and prosperity. Stop buying every single new nonessential technology - stop wasting electricity - stop wasting fuel on carefree long drives - stop voting candidates impressed by their charm.

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

There is a difference between an uprising against oppression and mob rule.

Patriotism is defensive; nationalism is aggressive. Patriotism is the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions; nationalism is the love of something less tangible, of the myth of a "people," justifying many things, a political and ideological substitute for religion. Patriotism is old-fashioned (and, at times and in some places, aristocratic); nationalism is modern and populist.

We must treat the practice of politics the same way we treat the practice of medicine. Unskilled politicians have no more place in politics than unskilled doctors have in medicine. And to make sure that only skilled individuals are permitted by law to run for office, we must include training and licensing into our current democratic paradigm. Otherwise democracy will remain a rule of the halfwits, by the halfwits, for the halfwits till kingdom come.

In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them.