Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
Interpretation
Disraeli critiques the ineffectiveness and absurdity of representative government.
In this quote, Benjamin Disraeli expresses his disdain for the concept of representative government, which he sees as a serious flaw in political systems. He uses the term 'fatal drollery' to emphasize that while the idea may seem well-intentioned, it ultimately leads to disastrous outcomes and is marked by irony and absurdity, highlighting the potential for disconnect between representatives and the people they are meant to serve.
In practice
In a political debate about the effectiveness of various government systems.
Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow.
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.
The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.
Struggles do not end when countries attempt the transition to democracy.
Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.
Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.
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