Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Bolingbroke, Henry

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Plato

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

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

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

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

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

Aristotle

10.

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

Hubbard, Kin

11.

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

Rogers, Will

12.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

13.

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

14.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

15.

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

Mark B. Cohen

16.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

17.

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

18.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

19.

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

20.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

21.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

22.

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.

23.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

24.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

25.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

26.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

27.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

28.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

29.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

30.

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

31.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

32.

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

Rogers, Will

33.

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

Bagehot, Walter

34.

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

35.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

36.

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

37.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

38.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

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.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

44.

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

Rogers, Will

45.

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

46.

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

Alfred E. Newman

47.

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

48.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

49.

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

50.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy