Every conceivable cruel method of blackmail was used against me to obtain by force and at all costs confessions and statements both about comrades who had been arrested, and about political activities.
The last eight years have created a lot of deep-seated hostility. People take political decisions very personally, and today there is a constant, ongoing attack, with one side or the other being maligned.
The views of intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow...What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been described long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles.
In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.
Just to say 'I believe' or 'I do not doubt' does not mean that you understand and see. To force oneself to see and accept a thing without understanding is political and not spiritual or intellectual.
The modern dilemma is essentially a spiritual one, and every one of its main aspects, moral, political and scientific, brings us back to the need of a religious solution.
Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.
The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.
Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs - even when we benefit from them.
The one thing that's always been the center of my political thinking - and it goes back to when I was 19 and editor of my college paper - is an abhorrence of the extreme.
I stopped this one about two months before federation and I want the next one to be more political. It will deal with the formation of white Australian policy and things like that.
The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate - which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave.
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
I have healthy disagreements with political parties I'm not aligned with, but I don't think it should be to the point where we're cursing and trying to strangle each other.
Life is like a boxing match, it seems, society has not been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of crime
There is an obvious connection, on the declining Roman empire's bread and circuses model, between political enthusiasm for public spectacles and the periods when we are least able to pay for them.
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective.
That is why I come forward tonight without any political label, without any bias, but just simply as an Englishman to say to you: a crime is being committed against civilization.
The prevailing ideology of the modern west - which is political economy - is in the doghouse. Having failed to notice atmospheric pollution, the economists then frightened themselves with the sort of financial crisis they said they had abolished.
