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

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

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

Nunn, Gregory

10.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

11.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

12.

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

13.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

14.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

15.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

18.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

19.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

20.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

21.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

22.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

23.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

24.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

25.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

26.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

27.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

28.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

29.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

30.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

31.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

32.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

33.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

34.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

35.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

37.

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

Kempton, Murray

38.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

39.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

41.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

42.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

43.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

44.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

45.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

46.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

47.

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

Reagan, Ronald

48.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

49.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

50.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar