Motivational Quotes

Politics

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

- Broun, Heywood

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Field, Franklin

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

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

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

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

Mark B. Cohen

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

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.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

10.

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

11.

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

Cameron, W. J.

12.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

13.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

14.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

16.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

17.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

21.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

22.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

23.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Seneca

28.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

29.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

30.

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.

31.

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

Jackson, Jesse

32.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

33.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

34.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

35.

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.

36.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

37.

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.

38.

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

Will, George F.

39.

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.

40.

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.

41.

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

42.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

43.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

44.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

48.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

49.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

50.

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