Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

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

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Benn, Tony

10.

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.

11.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

12.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

13.

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

Cameron, W. J.

14.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

15.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

16.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

21.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

22.

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

23.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

24.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

25.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

26.

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.

27.

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

Heine, Heinrich

28.

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

Rostand, Jean

29.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

30.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

31.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

32.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

33.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

34.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

35.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

36.

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

Rogers, Will

37.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

38.

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

Hattersley, Roy

39.

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

40.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

41.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

42.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

43.

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.

44.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

45.

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

Deighton, Len

46.

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

Rogers, Will

47.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

48.

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.

49.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

50.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.