Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

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.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

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

Noonan, Peggy

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

10.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

11.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

12.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Will, George F.

16.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

17.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

18.

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

Bush, George

19.

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

20.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

21.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

23.

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

Kempton, Murray

24.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

25.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

26.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

30.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

31.

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

32.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

33.

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

34.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

37.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

38.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

39.

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

40.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

41.

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

Rogers, Will

42.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

43.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

44.

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

45.

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

46.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

47.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

48.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

49.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.