Motivational Quotes

Politics

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Politics

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

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

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

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

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

10.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

11.

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

Mark B. Cohen

12.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

13.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

14.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

15.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

16.

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

17.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

18.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

19.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

20.

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

Horace

21.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

22.

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

Nunn, Gregory

23.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

24.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

25.

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

Rogers, Will

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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.

28.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

29.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

30.

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

31.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

32.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

33.

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

Benn, Tony

34.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

35.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

36.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

38.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

39.

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

40.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

41.

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

Kempton, Murray

42.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

43.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

44.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

45.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

46.

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

Aristotle

47.

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

Cannon, Joseph

48.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

49.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

50.

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