Political Animals Quotes

“we’re going to react the way we react to things that happen to us—but that doesn’t mean we have to surrender to our instincts and give up the hope that we can think and behave more rationally and humanely. There’s a reason why we no longer take pleasure throwing live cats into open fires, as both kings and peasants once did. Our culture has trained us to think this is abhorrent. That’s promising.”
― Rick Shenkman, Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
― Rick Shenkman, Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics