Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.
Interpretation
Politics involves navigating feasible options, while creativity pushes the boundaries of what can be imagined.
This quote highlights the dichotomy between the practical realm of politics and the limitless domain of creativity. Politics requires compromise and negotiation, focusing on achievable solutions within the constraints of societal frameworks. In contrast, creativity embodies the ability to envision and create possibilities that may seem unattainable, emphasizing the importance of imagination and innovation in contrast to the often rigid structures of political decision-making.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of innovative thinking in governance, one might say, 'As Ben Okri wisely noted, politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.'
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity_x000D_ _x000D_ And be the stuff of future legends,_x000D_ _x000D_ If we but dare to be real,_x000D_ _x000D_ And have the courage to see_x000D_ _x000D_ That this is the time to dream_x000D_ _x000D_ The best dream of them all.
We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice [as some states charging high taxes on goods from other states] would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquility.
How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.
The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.
Law and Order are the medicine of the body politic and when the body politic gets sick, medicine must be administered.
Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.
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