Motivational Quotes

Politics

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Politics

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

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

Aristotle

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

11.

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Gaulle, Charles De

12.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

13.

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

Rogers, Will

14.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

15.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

16.

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

Reagan, Ronald

17.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

18.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

20.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

21.

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

22.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

23.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

24.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

25.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

26.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

27.

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

Hubbard, Kin

28.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

29.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

30.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

31.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

32.

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

33.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

34.

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

Taft, William Howard

35.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

36.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

37.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

38.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

39.

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

Rogers, Will

40.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

41.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

42.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

43.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

44.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

45.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

46.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

47.

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

48.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

49.

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

Dane, Frank

50.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert