Once you start saying 'Let's talk political my own politics my own aspirations ' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time but it can become confusing and frustrating and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

What drew me to politics in the first place was the fact that I wanted to have a place to take a stand and use my voice to express what I believed in. But I've no longer got any political aspirations. I feel that as a politician fifty per cent of people would hate you before you even left the house.

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer fairer and cleaner 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.

When times are tough constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world cooperation works better. After all nobody's right all the time and a broken clock is right twice a day.

I believe in the separation of church and state but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion.

Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.

As a black woman my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.

Consul - in American politics a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

After much prayerful consideration I feel that I must say I have climbed my last political mountain.

I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.

America's present need is not heroics but healing not nostrums but normalcy not revolution but restoration.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion.

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else poetry in terms of psychology.

Society's dark hull drifts further and further away. It is this place - the place of our separation our distinction - that much of his poetry occupies.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and more especially from her lyrics of the last generation.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets how they've used tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings to the unknown and returns us to our rational structured selves refreshed.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally but reason does not relieve us of them.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.