Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

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

Bagehot, Walter

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

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

Thatcher, Margaret

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.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

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

Will, George F.

10.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

11.

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

12.

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.

13.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

14.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

15.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

16.

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

Kissinger, Henry

17.

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

18.

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

Major, John

19.

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

Noonan, Peggy

20.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

21.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

22.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

23.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

24.

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

25.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

26.

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.

27.

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.

28.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

29.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

30.

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

Swift, Jonathan

31.

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

32.

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

33.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

34.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

35.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

36.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

38.

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

Charles De Gaulle

39.

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

Kissinger, Henry

40.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

41.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

42.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

43.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

44.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

45.

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

46.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

47.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

48.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

49.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

50.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen