Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

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

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

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

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

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

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

10.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Paul Valery

14.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

15.

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

Noonan, Peggy

16.

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

Aristotle

17.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

18.

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.

19.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

20.

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

Bacon, Francis

21.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

22.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

25.

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

26.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

27.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

28.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

29.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

30.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

31.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

32.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

33.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Hattersley, Roy

35.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

39.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

40.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

41.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

42.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

43.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

44.

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

45.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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.

47.

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

Rogers, Will

48.

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

49.

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

50.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter