Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

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

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

Pepper, Claude D.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

10.

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.

11.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Greeley, Horace

15.

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

16.

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

Dane, Frank

17.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

18.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

19.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

20.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

21.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

23.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

24.

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.

25.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

Cameron, W. J.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

32.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

33.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

34.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

35.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

36.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

37.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

38.

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.

39.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

40.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

41.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

42.

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

Benn, Tony

43.

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

44.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

45.

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

46.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

47.

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.

48.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

49.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

50.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley