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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

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

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

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

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

Taft, William Howard

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

11.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

12.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

13.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

14.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

16.

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

Rogers, Will

17.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

18.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

19.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

20.

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

21.

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

Lowman, Hariold

22.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

23.

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

Deighton, Len

24.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

25.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

26.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

27.

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

28.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

29.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

30.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

31.

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

Brown, Jerry

32.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

37.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

38.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

39.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

40.

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

Will, George F.

41.

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

42.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

45.

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

46.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

47.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

48.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

49.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

50.

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