To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous HuxleyRead
All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the significance of a candidate's persona over actual political principles and plans.
Aldous Huxley critiques the modern political landscape by suggesting that the effective perception of a candidate, enhanced by financial backing and media manipulation, has eclipsed the importance of genuine political ideologies and agendas. In this context, it reveals a disheartening truth about how image and marketing have overshadowed substantive political discourse.
In practice
During a political rally, one might quote this to emphasize how elections focus more on image than values.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.
There are some militarists who say: ‘We are not interested in politics but only in the profession of arms.’ It is vital that these simple-minded militarists be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs. Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other.
Political violence is organized violence on the top which creates individual violence at the bottom.
A Christian cannot fail of being a republican.
Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.
It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
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