Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

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

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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.

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.

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

10.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

11.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

12.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

18.

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

19.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

20.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

21.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

23.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

24.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

25.

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

26.

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

Orwell, George

27.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

28.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

29.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

30.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

31.

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

Higgins, George V.

32.

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

Will, George F.

33.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

36.

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

37.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

38.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

39.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

40.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

41.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

42.

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

Berra, Yogi

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.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

45.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

46.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

47.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.