There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty the noblest cause of them all.

No cause is left but the most ancient of all the one in fact that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to each other in new ways posing questions about how we should respond to people when all that we know about them is what we have learned through a medium that permits all kinds of anonymity and deception.

Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh I don't get involved in politics ' as if that makes someone cleaner. No that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.

There's not a single chef I know of that does not think about the politics of the food they're serving.

We need real campaign finance reform to loosen the grip of special interests on politics.

Unfortunately money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us that is taught to us when we are very very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

I know I'm not supposed to have any opinions about politics because I'm famous.

Like religion politics and family planning cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith.

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith our politics and our culture are in the main less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.

Politics is an act of faith you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.

Educational institutes can no longer be prizes in church politics or furnish berths for failure in other walks of life.

America's most dangerous diseases have developed an immunity to politics. We suffer not from a failure of political organization or power but a failure of love.

What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked 'a majority of the majority ' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?

In politics what begins in fear usually ends in failure.

Ideology politics and journalism which luxuriate in failure are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history like the grains of gold in the sand of a river and the knowledge of the past the record of truths revealed by experience is eminently practical as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

Love is blind. My politics has been too. I think you can fall in love with ideas and you can fall in love with people. It's a very subjective experience. And I'm loyal to that experience.

I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

Politics is the only field in which the more experience you have the worse you get.