Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Barres

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

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

Taft, William Howard

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

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

Benn, Tony

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

Ambrose Bierce

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

10.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

11.

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

Hattersley, Roy

12.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

13.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

14.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

15.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

16.

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.

17.

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

Goldwater, Barry

18.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

19.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

20.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

21.

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

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.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

24.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

25.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

28.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

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

30.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

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.

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

Kissinger, Henry

33.

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

Hubbard, Kin

34.

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

35.

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

Plato

36.

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

37.

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

Nathan, George Jean

38.

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

39.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

40.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

41.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

42.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

43.

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

44.

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

45.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

46.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

47.

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

Orwell, George

48.

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

49.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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