The Little Black Book of Political Wisdom

159 Pages·2014·4.08 MB·English

by  Sanford L. Jacobs

ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
The Little Blue Book of Sailing Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Graduate Wisdom
The Little Black Book of Motorcycle Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Golf Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Horse Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Baseball Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Gambling Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Hunter’s Wisdom
The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Running
The Little Red Book of Dad’s Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing
The Little Green Book of Gardening Wisdom
The Little Green Book of Irish Wisdom
The Little Black Book of Writers’ Wisdom
The Little Black Book of Mafia Wisdom
The Little Red Book of Grandmother’s Wisdom The Little Red Book of Yoga Wisdom

Copyright © 2014 by Sanford L. Jacobs All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Danielle Ceccolini Images courtesy of Thinkstock ISBN: 978–1–62914–436–8
Ebook ISBN: 978–1–63220–029–7
Printed in China
Contents
Introduction
1. Politics and Politicians
2. Elections
3. The Legislative Branch
4. Presidents
5. Justice
6. The Press and Other News Media
7. War
8. Taxes, Taxation, Taxpayers
9. Economics and Economists
10. The Politics of Human Rights
Index
Introduction
I
n this book you will find quotations by politicians, philosophers, economists,
tycoons, journalists, comedians, judges, poets, novelists, historians, and many
others, including the dictatorial Mao Zedong, the naughty Mae West, and the
humble Pope Francis. As the title promises, a goodly amount of political wisdom
is sprinkled across these pages. A profound example is from Plato’s Republic,
written more than 2,500 years ago: “Mankind will never see an end of trouble
until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power
become lovers of wisdom.”
That’s what contemporary Turkish-born writer Mehmet Murat ildan meant
when he wrote: “A very wise quote is a spectacular waterfall! When you see it,
you feel its power.” One of my favorites was written by the highly regarded
Portuguese novelist José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, who died in 1900: “Politicians
and diapers should be changed frequently, and all for the same reason.”
The Internet makes it easy to find quotations; I got the text of Pope Francis’s
November 2013 Papal Exhortation from the Vatican’s website, vatican.va, in less
than a minute. Some presidential libraries and universities allow online access to
their digitized collections of official documents, speeches, and other public
papers of former presidents. Senate.gov is a great source of senatorial lore and
history. For some reason the House of Representatives lacks a similar digital
resource.
But anyone using quotations from the web should be wary. With some
exceptions, such as wikiquote.org and goodreads.com, a lot of websites include
quotations with erroneous attributions. Here’s a blatant example (I’d like to
believe it was posted to fool the clueless and amuse those who know history):
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is you never know if they are
genuine.”—Joseph Stalin (1879–1953).
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube all receive endless volumes of political
palaver and videos from politicians, pundits, bloggers, and other digitally
enabled political junkies. Of the few social media items I kept for the book, this is
one of my favorites: “If Babies Had Guns, They Wouldn’t Be Aborted.” That’s an
April 2013 tweet from Congressman Steve Stockman, a Texas Tea Party
Republican. His non sequitur quickly went viral; a Google search a year later
turned up a million results.
An appropriate quotation to end my introduction to The Little Black Book of
Political Wisdom is taken from Alexander Hamilton’s speech to the
Constitutional Convention of 1787: “There can be no truer principle than this—
that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the
protection of the government.”
Amen. Buy the book. It’ll help the economy.
Sanford L. Jacobs