Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Brown, Jerry

Best Quotes about Politics

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

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

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

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

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

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

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.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

13.

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.

14.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

15.

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

Rogers, Will

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

19.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

20.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

21.

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

22.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

24.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

25.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

26.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

27.

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

Roche, John P.

28.

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

Dane, Frank

29.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

30.

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

31.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

32.

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

33.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

34.

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

35.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

36.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

37.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

38.

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

Welles, Orson

39.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

43.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

44.

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.

45.

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.

46.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Berra, Yogi

50.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott