Motivational Quotes

Politics

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

- Amis, Kingsley

Best Quotes about Politics

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

10.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

11.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

12.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

13.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

14.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

15.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

16.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

18.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

19.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

20.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

21.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

22.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

23.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

24.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

25.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

26.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

27.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

28.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

29.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

30.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

31.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

32.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

33.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

34.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

35.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

36.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

37.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

38.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

39.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

40.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

41.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

42.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

43.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

44.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

45.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

46.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

47.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

48.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

49.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

50.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean