I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.
Interpretation
The speaker considers American politics to be a noble field worthy of discussion and analysis.
In this quote, Theodore White expresses his belief that American politics is a significant and honorable pursuit, akin to an art form. He conveys a sense of duty and passion for writing about politics, suggesting that engaging with this subject is not only important but also a meaningful endeavor that reflects the complexities of society and governance.
In practice
In a speech about civic engagement at a community event.
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism or homophobia or policy issues or taxes or urban decay or health care, you're not going to go anywhere with it if we don't focus on the concentration of power.
If we let Korea down, the Soviet[s] will keep right on going and swallow up one [place] after another.
I want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around.
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.
Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?
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