[RC] Part 1 : RADICAL CENTRIST PHILOSOPHY in QUOTES
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Avesland at aol.com
Sun Aug 14 21:08:24 EDT 2005
Radical Centrist Philosophy
in Quotes
Compiled by : Billy Rojas
_________________________________________________________
Contents : Part 1 The Need for Radical Centrism
Democrats and Republicans and Others
The Radical Centrist Alternative
Principles of Radical Centrism
Part 2 Radical Centrism and the Future
Radical Centrism and American Culture
Radical Centrist Politics
__________________________________________________________
The Need for Radical Centrism
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws or constitutions. But laws
and institutions must go hand-in-hand with the progress of the human mind.
As...new discoveries are made, new thoughts discovered, and opinions and
manners change, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
Thomas Jefferson
Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There
is scarcely an absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science, or
manners, which it will not bear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
According to...[what] we call "opinion," a fact is neither real nor unreal;
rather it is desirable or undesirable. It serves as an accomplice or a
plotter, as
an ally or adversary, not as an object that needs to be known.
Jean-Francois Revel
Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll
to find out what would sell at Gettysburg.
Robert Coles
To put the world right and in order, we must put the nation in order. To put
the nation in order we must put the family in order. To put the family in
order
one first cultivates the personal life; one must first put our hearts right.
Confucious
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
is to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire
I don't believe that there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough
it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, cannot ignore.
George Carlin
You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
Liz Smith
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Voltaire
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom
of thought which they never use.
Soren Kierkegaard
I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women,
join the unqualified men in running our government.
Cissy Farenthold
Washington is to lying what Wisconsin is to cheese.
Dennis Miller
The progress of rivers to the sea is not as rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire.
Absolute tolerance has the same disastrous effects on the adult personality
as extreme permissiveness on the growing child.
Robert C. Wolff
The notion that we can have a society in which we can fully express
ourselves in every way as long as we do not harm others is a chimera...
We are a much more tolerant society than we once were, even as signs
of pathology increase around us... Our willingness to accept all kinds of
lifestyles may go hand in hand with our inability to maintain a
civilized society.
Stanley Rothman
As long as people continue to believe in absurdities they will
continue to commit atrocities.
Voltaire
What experience and history teach is this -that people and governments
never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.
Hegel
The core fallacy of the idea of progress is the notion that it is possible
to optimize everything at once.
Philip Slater
What do you think of the human mind ? I mean, in case you
think there is a human mind.
Mark Twain
To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's first
take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.
Dave Berry
A world power, if it is to maintain its position, needs to generate respect
for its culture, not only its military prowess.
Irving Kristol
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there
is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to admit [and correct] our
mistakes.
George Soros
The problem with professional politicians isn't that they're particularly
evil
or stupid; its just that they've fallen into the very human trap of
believing
only their friends and ignoring their critics.
Ernie Prabhakar
What does democratic mean when political parties don't have different
ideological beliefs and different visions of the nature of the system and
where
the promised land lies -so that they can debate alternative roads to the
future ?
Elections become popularity polls swirling around trivial issues and
dependent
upon who looks best on television. Elections come to be seen as replacement
of one set of crooks with another set of crooks... Real democracy demands
real ideological alternatives at election time or it becomes an exercise in
trivialism... To work, democracy needs a vision of utopia -a route to a
better
society- a vision of what it is that transforms narrow sectarian
self-interest.
Lester C. Thurow
Out of all modern history one simple fact emerges: For the radical
intelligentsia,
the old ideologies have lost their 'truth' and their power to persuade.
Daniel Bell
Philosophy consists of one philosopher arguing that all the others are
jackasses.
H. L. Mencken
Being a cynic is contemptibly easy... you don't have to invest anything in
your
work, no effort, no pride, no compassion, no sense of excellence, nothing.
Molly Ivins
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to
ignore the facts than to change the preconception.
Jessamyne West
If one regards respect for women's rights as good, its very difficult to
maintain
the notion that all cultures are morally equal... Still, even the more
rational
feminist Left can't...bring itself to admit that the West holds the moral
high ground on anything.
Cathy Young
Gender feminists' ideological and political treatment of problems ends up
confusing the issue, creating acrimony, and helping nobody.
Christina Hoff Sommers
The main danger in this life are the people who want to change
everything.....
or nothing.
Nancy Astor
We often find that, having been freed long ago in actual fact from a myth,
a doctrine, or an idea, we are at the same time not freed from it in the
mind.
Ludwig Feuerbach
The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood.
Arthur Powell Davies
The folks who don't want change have hired tens of thousands of lobbyists
in Washington and the state capitals just to make sure that they, and not
you,
get their way. When a bill comes before Congress or the state legislatures.
they are there, not you.
Sam Smith
...many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can
ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to
cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor savings
in order to...appease that appetite.
Mark Twain
...major defeats have occurred when we have been unable to convince the
nation to support or implement the Constitution...A democratic structure of
law remains democratic, remains lawful only as people are continuously
persuaded to be democratic.Law is always nullified by practice or disdain
unless the minds and hearts of people sustain law.
James M. Lawson, Jr.
It is dangerous to be right in matters of which the authorities are wrong.
Voltaire
Fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two...
characteristics of conservatism : Its fondness for authority and its
lack of understanding of economic forces.
F. A. Hayek
The future will be determined by whether people can confront Capitalism's
repetitive pathologies to organize a new system that genuinely merges
the market with democracy.
William Greider
In the knowledge economy, imperfect competition seems to be inherent in
the economy itself. Initial advantages gained through early application and
exploitation of knowledge (that is, through what has become known as the
"learning curve") become permanent and irreversible. What this implies is
that neither free trade economics nor protectionism will by themselves
work as economic policies. The knowledge economy seems to require
both in balance.
Peter F. Drucker
Adam Smith's suggestions about the economic psychology of early man
were as false as Rousseau's about the political psychology of the savage.
Karl Polyani
Few corporations would risk damaging the natural environment nowadays,
for fear of harsh penalties. But many damage the human environment
suffering no penalties at all.
Edward Luttwak
The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, efficious and
dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -this much we can
stand.
But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or
navigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could bring ourselves
to pay attention to Washington itself, but we can't.
P. J. O'Rourke
Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly
and for the same reason.
Anonymous
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it
incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx
The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble
to put makeup on two faces.
Maureen Murphey
There is no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
Will Rogers
________________________________________________
Democrats and Republicans and Others
Conservative, n. : A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
Right and Left -even the extreme Left- are political frameworks predicted
on traditional premises striving to attain obsolete goals.
F. M. Esfandiary
A Conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the
first time.
Alfred Wiggan
A Conservative is one who declares radicals centrists after they are dead.
Leo Rosten
For a generation we have watched liberals gain more power and display
less liberalism.
Jeff Greenfield
Economic Liberalism misread the truths of the Industrial Revolution because
it insisted on judging social events from the economic viewpoint. [It failed
to
recognize the dangers of] an avalanche of social dislocation.
Karl Polyani
Those philosophers are...deeply mistaken who suppose that the social
inheritance is a burden to cast off, a spell from which we must be awakened.
Without that inheritance the individual is exactly nothing.
Robert C. Wolff
To develop a political majority requires more than occasional coalitions
knitted together by overlapping interests. It requires a culture of
commonality.
Todd Gitlin
The Democrats have been unable to reassemble the electoral majority of
the New Deal years because...they lack any clear sense of mission....Liberals
have become obsessed with a legalistic approach to all problems. Liberals
have also lost their links to the community life of everyday Americans.
David Moberg
"Don't blame me," the bipartisan neo-liberal / conservative American
overclass
says to the middle class its preferred economic policies have harmed. "The
Information Age made me do it !" How convenient, that the policies that
promote Historical Progress should also, by coincidence, be those that
promote
the short term interests of the business elites that subsidize the
Republican Party.
Michael Lind
We somehow have to outflank the ignorant armies of Left and Right to find
the space and the time to convert our industrial technology to a new kind of
Pythagorean science.
William Greider
In the 1960s radical students demanded and won free speech rights at public
universities. Now, many of them are tenured professors, and they're imposing
just the opposite on helpless students...by feeding them totally spurious...
theories about rights.
Debra J. Saunders
Ninety-eight percent of the people in this country are hard working, honest
Americans. Its the other two percent that gets all the publicity.
But then we elected them.
Lily Tomlin
The Democrats seem to be basically nice people, but they have demonstrated
time and again they have the management skill of celery. They're the kind of
people who'd stop to help change a flat, but would somehow manage to
set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to trust them with a Cusinart,
let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know
how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want
to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.
Dave Berry
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to
prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both succeed, and are right.
H. L. Mencken
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter,
taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass from your lawn. The Republicans
are the party that says government does not work, and then get elected
and prove it.
Will Rogers
Every two years American politics increasingly fills the airwaves with
the most virulent, scurrious, wall-to-wall character assassination of
nearly every political, practitioner in the country -and then [the media]
declares itself puzzled that Americans have lost trust in politicians.
Charles Krauthammer
George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the
previous administration for his troubles.
Anonymous
We cannot construct a humane society out of the dominant trends
of our present one.
Philip Slater
The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to
admit that each party is worse than the other.
Will Rogers
To many Americans, liberalism has lost its old identification with
individualism and opportunity, standing instead for preferences for
various groups and minorities : Economic, sexual, and racial. Populists,
libertarians, and conservatives alike disagree with this agenda.
Kevin Phillips
A capitalist cannot afford the pleasures of conservatism and of
necessity regards tradition as an obstacle to be overcome. How the
idea originated that capitalists are conservative is a mystery to me.
Neil Postman
Social responsibility in the private sector is the alternative to continued
expansion of the public sector.
Willis Harman
Those in power recognize no authority they have not defined, brokered,
or mediated. Conversely, any who would contest their arrangement must
justify themselves before the bench. It is the circular genius of State
logic :
There can be no protest except with permission.
Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann
The core of the Left is a set of values, most notably that worth is intrinsic
and doesn't depend on success and power. Traditionally various factual
beliefs have been added to these values, such as homogenaity of human
nature and its perfectibility by social change. Because they are matters of
fact they can be empirically investigated. Indeed, on strong current evidence
both these beliefs appear to be false... It is quixotic to try and eliminate
features that are pretty much universal among cultures, such as
self-interest,
a system of social rank, or even sexual jealousy.
(In a review of a book by Peter Singer)
Leigh Van Valen
Don't you know the difference between the two economic systems ?
Under Capitalism man exploits man. But under Communism its
just the opposite.
Emil Vrabic
Communist society is not Socialist but bureaucratic collectivist...Communist
totalitarianism... in Cuba...was involved in practical as well as
philosophical
contradictions...[Thus] Fidel became an orthodox Moscow Communist, even
approving the imperialist Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Michael Harrington
Nazi morality explicitly promoted racist and sexist assumptions at a time
when
ideals of equality had begun to make themselves felt throughout Western
society...
While the ideosyncratic racial fantasies of Nazis seem as dated as the
goose-step
the ideology that drove it was the first example of a new and onerous kind
of
doctrine based on ethnic identity.. In an age of what critics call moral
meltdown...Long after the demise of Nazism, ethnic [zealotry] continues to
draw its power from the vision of an exclusive community of
"us," without "them."
Claudia Koonz
The policies of pure laissez-faire cannot solve the problems Americans are
experiencing from economic change because the pure anti-government
creed tries to define those problems out of existence.
E. J. Dione, Jr.
The American version of "libertarianism" is an abberation... nobody really
takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by
American libertarian principles would self destruct in three seconds.
Noam Chomsky
____________________________________________________-
The Radical Centrist Alternative
I'm fed up with environmental organizations and industry groups alike
whipping soluable environmental problems into out-of-control hyperbole just
to fill war chests, ignoring serious problems that beg for solutions... So
call
us radical. Its time for those of us in the Center to rebel against the
non-productive fringe.
Katherine S. Kelley
We are not in favor of the Old Protectionism which only protected the profits
and power of the minority elite. What we need is a New Protectionism , a
reassertion of priorities such as protection of the environment, economic
fairness, and equity among nations. ...Its time to replace the old
protectionism
with the protection of citizens' rights, protection of the environment,
protection of
the poor and disadvantaged from the greed and indifference of the
global conglomerates.
Jim Hightower
Democracy is like everything else we do.; it is a form of collaboration of
ignorant people with experts.
E. F. Schumacher
A conflagration is a serious business; and whenever we have to deal with
such a serious business well-intentioned kindness won't do at all. (Either
do something or get out of the way).
Soren Kierkegaard
Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp
transformation...
a "divide." Within few short decades, society rearranges itself -its
worldview;
its basic values; its social and political structures; its arts; its key
institutions. Fifty
years later there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even
imagine
the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their parents were
born. We are currently living through just such a transformation.
Peter F. Drucker
The Right-Left establishment is unprepared for our emerging situation... The
Right-Left establishment...is resigned to humanity's basic predicament....
Up-Wingers are resigned to nothing. They accept no human predicament
as permanent, no tragedy as irreversible, no goal as unobtainable.
F. M. Esfandiary
One of the most important parts of any education is to learn how to
understand views different than one's own and to outgrow the narrow-
mindedness and lack of intellectual imagination that cling to us from
childhood.
Walter Kaufmann
We are all damaged children.
R. Buckminster Fuller
The... basic failures of our industrial society...can find resolution only if
the dominance of the growth and consumption ethic is replaced by
(a) an "ecological ethic," and (b) a "self-realization ethic."
Willis Harman
You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be
a victor without victims.
Harriet Woods
There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the
credit.
(attributed to both)
George C. Marshall and Harry S Truman
Successful societies have to unite around a powerful story with a sustaining
ideology. If there is no story to tell, leaders have no agenda and no
self-confidence in what they are doing... But what is the story that
Capitalism tells to the community to hold the community together when
Capitalism explicitly denies the need for community ? ...Individual greed
simply isn't a goal that can hold any society together for the long run.
Lester C. Thurow
We reject the extremism of the individualistic Right and the paternalistic
Left, as well as the complacency of the "sensible center."
Ernie Prabhakar
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan executed at some
indefinite point in the future.
Patton
Never mind what Clauswitz thought ; what do you think ?
Irwin Rommel
Not all Independents are centrists, but increasingly centrists are
Independents,
because they want the freedom to choose the best ideas from both parties.
John Avalon
In a time of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you
end up being governed by your inferiors.
Plato
The struggle for the soul of popular culture promises no quick
and easy victories.
Michael Medved
Populism...is never far from the surface of U.S. politics...Popular fear of
downward mobility has been one of history's proven sources of
political radicalism.
Keven Phillips
People seeking to make repairs in our political system too often just tinker
with what's there rather than stepping back to look at what has really gone
wrong. Reform is not just about fixing things -applying the political
equivalent
of duct tape- but also about addressing problems in new ways. Without a
change in thinking, other political changes make little difference... We
have to
move to a politics that offers a choice not between "liberals" and
"conservatives"
but between corporations and democracy, not between government and big
business but between overbearing institutions and supportive communities.
Sam Smith
A great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as
the eagle seeks the blue of the sky.
Crazy Horse
I must study politics and war so that my sons have liberty to
study mathematics and philosophy.
John Adams
I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
Lillian Hellman
No question is ever settled until it is settled right.
Ella Wilcox
...without some universally acceptable ideas about nature and man there
can be no stable world order.
Lancelot Law Whyte
We believe that individuals have an obligation to work for the greatest good
of society, but we also agree that the free market of ideas and resources is
generally the best way to determine what that is...
Ernie Prabhakar
Three quarters of Generation X agree with the statement "our generation
has an important voice, but no one seems to hear it." Whatever this voice
may be, it does not fit comfortably within established partisan camps.
Ted Halstead
>From the outside, citizen groups may seem extremely partisan. But when
you wade in, you'll find that most citizen groups are caught up in
fascinating
dialogues, now, between their radical middle members and their more
conventionally partisan members.
Mark Satin
Our private and corporate lives have become information processes just
because we have put our central nervous systems outside of us as electronic
technology... As the speed of information increases, the tendency is for
politics to move away from representation and delegation of constituents
toward
immediate involvement of the entire community in the central acts of
decision.
Marshall McLuhan
A social movement can rouse people to action when it can do three things :
Simplify ideas, establish a claim to truth, and, in a union of the two,
demand a commitment to action.
Daniel Bell
_____________________________________________________-
\
Principles of Radical Centrism
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of
ideas
in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The most important distinctions among people are not ideological, political,
or economic. They are cultural. People and nations are attempting to answer
a basic human question : Who are we ? And they are answering that question
in the traditional way, by reference to the things that mean the most to
them :
Ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions.
Samuel P. Huntington
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what
religion is.
Mohandas K. Ghandi
A religion which envisages salvation as a result of tight conformity to
traditional
standards or of disengagement from worldly affairs is not likely to motivate
its
adherents to achieve worldly results. However, a religion which emphasizes
that individuals must work out their own salvation through disciplined
worldly
involvement is much more likely to motivate its adherents strongly in
the direction of secular achievement.
(close paraphrase)
David C. McClelland
Never tell people how to do things. Tell then what to do and they
will surprize you with their ingenuity.
Patton
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail.
Muriel Strode
I'm not afraid of storms for I'm learning to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott
The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of
greatest astonishment.
Celia Green
I never see what has been done ; I see what remains to be done.
Madame Curie
I don't know the key to success but the key to failure is
trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society.
If we're looking for the sources of our troubles we shouldn't test people
for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and
love of power.
P. J. O'Rourke
Every worthwhile goal in human affairs has been accomplished by
its philosophy.
G. Harry Stine
Listen critically to everyone; make the hard decisions openly;
admit your mistakes.
Ernie Prabhakar
I'm thinking of integrity as broader than truthtelling -not being
hypocritical,
not misleading people.
(quoted by Marianne Arbogast)
Jim Corbet
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is
demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker
Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.
Irwin Rommel
If art doesn't make us better, then what on Earth is it for ?
Alice Walker
I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that.
Then I realized I was somebody.
Lily Tomlin
If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking.
Patton
Management is doing things right ; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker
I would rather die a meaningful death than live a meaningless life.
Corazon Aquino
Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.
Helen Keller
You can't change the rules if you're not in the room. You can't finish
a revolution without getting in there and fighting.
(quoted by Mark Satin)
Susan Estrich
Truth is always exciting. Speak it then, life is dull without it.
Pearl Buck
The world stands open only to an open mind.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Thomas Jefferson
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
Harper Lee
Schooling can no longer be the monopoly of the schools. Education in the
post-Capitalist society has to permeate the entire society.
Peter F. Drucker
Politics...is about more than the giving or getting of things. It is also
about
helping the human spirit flourish... It is about creating conditions for
individual
human beings to be constantly learning and growing.
Mark Satin
The overall aim of third way politics should be to help citizens pilot their
way
through the major revolutions of our time : Globalization, transformations
in
personal life, and our relationship to nature... Our problems and
possibilities
are not within the reach of the Left / Right scheme. [Thus] the idea of the
radical center. ...One might suggest a prime motto for the new politics,
no rights without responsibilities.
Tony Giddens
We believe in...
individual responsibility
freedom of choice
the market
meritocracy
democracy
fallible humanity
Plus we believe in...collective action, strong leadership, moral judgements,
social welfare, public accountability, forced responsibility...
Ernie Prabhakar
At the end of the day, concerns about democracy are what binds together
diverse planks of the radical center's domestic agenda, a strong labor
movement, a commitment to public education, a defense of the universal
antidiscrimination principle.
Richard Kahlenberg
I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time,
for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.
Rita Mae Brown
All change in history, all advance, comes from nonconformists.
A. J. P:. Taylor
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
Patton
It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather, an irate, tireless
minority
keen to set brush fires in people's minds.
Samuel Adams
We never desire passionately what we desire through reason alone.
La Rouchefoucauld
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Sally Berger
In practical terms this new politics -based on fiscal prudence, economic
populism, family-friendly morality, social investment, campaign reform,
environmental conservation, and technological innovation- could eventually
take hold in either of the major parties.
Ted Halstead
________________________________________________________
End of Part 1
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