I didn't come into politics to have to deal with the issue of clandestine entry, illegal working, or an asylum system that allows a free run for right-wing bigots.
Politics can be likened to driving at night over unfamiliar hills and mountains. Close attention must be paid to what the beam can reach and the next bend.
I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.
I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in politics.
Possibly the fact that I was physically quite feeble, a relatively short little fellow, attracted me to that idea of a very authoritative and aggressive version of Conservative politics.
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
The politics of the Cape Town Metro, which allows an executive Mayoral committee to make secret decisions which affect you, behind closed doors, is wrong!
Part of the problem in politics is that people only look at the next four to eight years: kick the can down the road and say, 'Hey, it's the next person's problem.'
To succeed in big-city politics requires a powerful, motivating vision of a better world, a plan to get there, a willingness to meet constituents on their terms, and a tough political skin.
I've been in politics now for long enough to not worry about what others are saying, but instead to talk about what I believe.
I am not at all a politician. I don't think I'm cut out for politics. I am certainly not going to stand for election.
That's possible, and in fact the legislation, the politics should graduate the advantages towards those who have children and give less to those who don't have children.
In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process.
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people.
I have to think of my status as a resident in this country. But I do insist that in Paraguay there was order; the judiciary had the power of complete independence; justice was fully exercised.
My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.
If you have any power at all from being popular, then you have a duty to help people out.
Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.
When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.
