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About this quote

What does it mean?
The idea that politics can ever be truly pure is an unrealistic fantasy.
In plain terms
Politics will never be completely clean or perfect.
What can you take from it?
Expect compromise in political systems.

Where it applies

  • voting
  • political campaigns
  • civic engagement

Putting it to work

  • researching candidates realistically
  • accepting imperfect systems

Questions to consider

  • Is political purity possible?
  • How much compromise is acceptable?

Another view

It may discourage civic participation by promoting cynicism.

More from John James Ingalls

  1. Every man is the center of a circle, whose fatal circumference he can not pass.

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  2. Ad astra per aspera.

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