Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

Roche, John P.

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

Broun, Heywood

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

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

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

Will, George F.

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

Plato

10.

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

11.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

12.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

13.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

14.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

15.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

16.

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.

17.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

18.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

19.

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

20.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

21.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

22.

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.

23.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

24.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

25.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

26.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

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.

28.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

29.

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

30.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

31.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

32.

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

Brown, Jerry

33.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

34.

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

Hubbard, Kin

35.

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.

36.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

37.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

38.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

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

Hubbard, Kin

40.

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.

41.

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

Ambrose Bierce

42.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

43.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

44.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

45.

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.

46.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

47.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

48.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

49.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

50.

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