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About this quote

What does it mean?
In politics, staying aloof leads to irrelevance, while involvement risks corruption.
In plain terms
You can be irrelevant if you stay out, or corrupt if you get in.
What can you take from it?
Politics offers no pure path.

Where it applies

  • political engagement
  • public service
  • activism

Putting it to work

  • choose your path
  • accept compromise

Questions to consider

  • Is it possible to stay clean in politics?
  • What is the cost of engagement?

Another view

It assumes corruption is inevitable for those involved.

More from Eugene McCarthy

  1. Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.

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  2. I can still smell the tear gas in the Hilton Hotel.

    Permalink to quote #16

  3. As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

    Permalink to quote #13

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