When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain the politics of constant conflict may be good but what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Therefore the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are like God's infinite mercy a last resort.

The TUC's new slogan 'a future that works' sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapid deficit reduction is failing in its own terms but even at its best it is short-sighted muddle-through politics with no vision of a new economic model.

Look how many millions of people are underemployed or have lost their jobs. The last thing I'm going to do is play politics with their future.

Everything about my politics has been about the future.

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention.

While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics executive salaries and the future of the euro do the opposite even if it's hard. Invest in the spirit.

The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making primarily at the federal level and the big issues of the day are not being addressed leaving our future in jeopardy.

Knowledge about the economy ideas about capitalism and government the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need either for power or for friendship and adulation or a combination of both.

Value your freedom or you will lose it teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics' respond those who don't want to learn.

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns they simply are unaccountable. They're free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press.

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.