Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Churchill, Winston

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

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

Paul Valery

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

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

10.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

11.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

12.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

13.

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

Albert Einstein

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

17.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

18.

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

19.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

20.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

22.

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

Aristotle

23.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

24.

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

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

Roche, John P.

26.

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

Mark B. Cohen

27.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

28.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

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

Kempton, Murray

30.

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

31.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

32.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

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.

34.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

36.

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.

37.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

38.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Kissinger, Henry

44.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

45.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

46.

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.

47.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

48.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

49.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin