If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power.

Remember in 1973 the same science chatter said that the coming Ice Age is going to occur, we're going to lose millions of people. And the politicians knew how to solve it, they just didn't have the courage to solve it; they were going to put coal dust on the Arctic.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

If you interviewed 1,000 politicians and asked about whether the media's too soft or too hard, about 999 would say too hard.

Some newspapers have a hands-off policy on favored politicians. But it's generally very small newspapers or local TV stations.

I don't totally believe that all of the politicians see a problem with the gap between the scores of black children and other groups. I believe that many politicians think this has been the way it has always been, so what's the problem?

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

Politicians often lie.

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

The Women of the Storm made a big difference for me, because it really put some real-life faces with the situation, and not just politicians.

For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.

I think politicians are so far out of step with what people really want.