Motivational Quotes

Politics

When great questions end, little parties begin.

- Bagehot, Walter

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

10.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

12.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

13.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

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.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

16.

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.

17.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

18.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

19.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

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.

21.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

22.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

23.

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

24.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

25.

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

Bush, George

26.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

27.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

28.

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

Alfred E. Newman

29.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

30.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

31.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

32.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

35.

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

Bacon, Francis

36.

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

37.

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

Paul Valery

38.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

39.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

40.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

41.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

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

43.

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

44.

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

45.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

46.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

47.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

48.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

49.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

50.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg